I’m on the hunt for a new preamp as I just sold my Schiit Freya+. Currently I’m using my Topping A90 headphone amp as the preamp for my system since it has balanced inputs & outputs. It sounds surprisingly good, as in really good! It sounds great as a headphone amp, but I wasn’t expecting it to sound just as good as a stand-alone preamp.
Anywho…
Wanting to moving away from tubes for a while, this QUAD Artera Pre intrigues me. Its looks and design, clean and simple, relay-stepped volume, no DAC, a Class A headphone stage, a supposedly very good MM/MC phono stage, balanced inputs and outputs, and of course the QUAD heritage to back it up.
I’m wanting to know if anyone here has any personal experience with this QUAD preamp. The main concern is the sound of the unit obviously.
I don’t have any experience with the Pre but I have the matching Artera Power Amp. Been running it for about 6 months and I like it very much. Been considering this pre to replace my Rogue Audio Pre. Quad products pop up used every now and then and are a great deal if you ask me. Not many of them around in the USA. I bought a pair of Quad s-5 speakers of Craig’s list and ran them for about 6 months then sold them. Regret it every day.
That’s one of the many things I like about going with this preamp. It’s not a “me too” preamp like so many others. It’s very rarely seen around these parts. Of course, it helps that I’ve been hearing nothing but great things about this preamp as well as the other models in the lineup. So that makes me even more comfortable in ordering one, which I’ll be doing very soon.
Sorry for the almost year delay! Completely forgot about this thread!
As for the Artera Pre, I love this preamp. I liked everything I got out of the Schiit Freya+ I had beforehand with the various NOS tubes. The Artera Pre runs circles around the Freya+. It’s really no competition.
For one thing, the Artera is dead silent. And keep in mind, my DAC is in the front of the room, and the preamp is almost at the rear of the room, with 30 ft of XLR cables coming from the DAC to the preamp, then another 30 ft of XLR cables going back up front right below the DAC to the amp.
I’m not using any “Tilt” control or any other tone controls, just running it flat. The body and refinement this preamp offers up is excellent. The top end is smooth yet still airy. The entire midrange is solid and spacious, and the bass is extended, layered and controlled.
Another thing I love about this preamp is that on top of both the RCA and XLR variable outputs, it also has an RCA fixed output, which is perfect for feeding signal to my analogue side of the system. It’s not an actual “Tape Loop”, but I can still record to either cassette tape or reel-to-reel.
Oh, and how could I forget the MM/MC phono preamp section of this unit. Plenty of gain, very dynamic, and again, dead silent. I’m running an Audio-Technica AT-OC9XSL which of course is a low output moving coil cart.
Much appreciated! I also happen to have a freya+ but I feel it lacks a bit of refinement. Not sure if it’s a phycological thing or real. In the meantime I have a QUAD VA-ONE+ integrated as secondary system for near field listening and damn I tried several alternatives, some of which are much more expensive, but just cannot replace it. That’s why I became interested in Artera Pre once I heard of it.
Thanks again. Now I have more confidence to get one. And by the way, your listening room looks awesome, with the warm and cool atomsphere especially, and I can see so much effort you put there. Hats off.
Sweet! Looks nice too. I’ve had one on order for a week or more. I’m chomping at the bit to install it. I have a Freya+ as well. Glad to hear you like the Quad more!
Just purchased this pre amp Saturday. Mightily impressed with the performance and how great it looks just out the box.
Particularly pleased with how great vinyl sounds on my Rega P6 via a Musical Fidelity MX-Vynl phono stage.
Roon using HQPlayer and Tidal is hitting all the right spots too.
I have the Artera pre hooked up to a Mytek Brooklyn Power AMP+, but wondered if anybody has heard the Artera pre partnered with the Quad Stereo Power amp, which I guess might be something I could consider in the future?
Finally, I’m not too sure I’m a great believer in burn in time, but did anybody notice improvements with this pre amp after a certain period of time?
Congratulations Kevin with your Artera Pre! I own one myself for two years and am very happy with it, too. I didn’t notice a change in the sound quality over time, to me it sounded perfect right out of the box. I had it driving the Artera Stereo and couldn’t be happier. When the Artera Mono blocks appeared I traded in the Stereo expecting even better sound quality, but the difference was not that big. I didn’t have the chance to really compare the two, but my impression was that the sound was a bit more focused. Generally I would describe the sound of these power amps as neutral and relaxed. It’s the kind of sound that makes you forget the audio gear and lets you focus on the music instead.
I like your description of neutral and relaxed Marcel. I have always favoured what I tend to describe as a warm sound, and to that end I have always found that British brands such as Arcam and Cambridge Audio deliver that and I have had various products from them over the last 30 years or so. Quad being a British firm historically had a big bearing in me buying this pre amp.
I look forward to reading your blog entry and the replies later on today Geoff.
I was doing some research on the Quad Stereo power amp and stumbled across a 26 page thread on AVFORUMS where the OP posed the question " Do all amplifiers sound the same?" Some posters thought that pre amps might sound and perform differently but power amps less so. One particularly bullish poster who contributed more than a few posts reckoned if you could hear the difference between a £500 amp and a £50,000 amp it was a placebo effect! Example below.
"Provided the amp has sufficient power to drive the speakers in question, a £500 PA amp will produce the exact same output as a £50000 boutique amp. Repeated testing has always produced the exact same results and not a single person on the planet who has completed any double blind, output matched testing has EVER produced a result that suggests they could tell the difference. There are no scientific papers or journal entries that prove any of this pseudo science “audio quackery” (thanks James Randi!) has any merit or scientific basis. I do not in any way hold it against anyone who honestly believes their magic power cable or £10k amp setup makes a difference but make no bones about it you are incorrect if you think the physical lump of metal you have is the reason."
He reckoned that speaker placement, room acoustics etc was the main factor rather than an amp and I think a lot of people will agree with that.
I have no idea whether there is any merit in his thinking regarding power amps, but it got me thinking that there probably wouldn’t be much if any difference between what my Mytek Power amp delivers and what the Quad power amp could better. Perhaps synergy with the Quad pre perhaps?
Plus it looks really good too. But would it be worth forking out £1650 for no guaranteed improvement over the Mytek? Although I’d like to think I could clawback around about £1k of that outlay by trading in the Mytek against the Quad, or selling privately.
For what it’s worth: I once compared a Quad 303 and a 606 Mk1 and there was a big difference in sound. I very much preferred the 303, that seemed to produce a more easily flowing sound, less sterile and businesslike than the 606. The comparison was done with a Quad 33 preamp and the ESL57 (the natural partners of a 303) but still I didn’t expect such a difference.
Interesting. I’ll maybe do some more research on this as well as asking my Quad dealer what he thinks about whether I will find any benefit of pairing the pre and power from the same brand.
I have paired Arcam and Rotel pre’s and powers many moons ago, but never used those brands pre’s with another brands power and vice versa to see if there was much difference.
After letting the Quad pre settle in for a few weeks I decided to have a bit of a play about with EQ and Tilt. Full disclosure - Tilt means absolutely zero to me, and what it does pretty much the same lol. Anyway, at least for now I have settled on EQ settings of Bass (Flat). Tilt I have set at [(-2,+2)] for Bass and Treble. Gain is 1.5db.
How does Tilt work with Roon’s Muse settings? If I use Tilt does this mean I should have Muse disabled on Roon?
Conventional tone controls adjust bass or treble individually. Quad’s Tilt control, however, adjusts both ends of the frequency spectrum together, adjusting the overall balance of the sound to make it ‘warmer’ or ‘cooler’, supposedly without colouring the sound.
