[honesthoff2]

Been out of the hobby for ten or twelve years now, but slowly (and regretfully) easing back in. I had great success with Kara's DeHavilland Mercury2 linestage with my Stratos Extreme Monos driving Revel F50's. This was pre-candela, so I would think, now, that Klaus has designed and built a pre that is best suited for you. As an aside, and introduction...I recently moved to the Bay Area, and had the great pleasure of touring the Magico facility in Hayward, and talking to a few of their employees. Did you know that Alon used to voice his speakers with Klaus' amps? He now uses Soulution 7 series amps from Switzerland (40x the price). I could not have been more proud of anything then when I told their engineers that I have been an Odyssey customer for twenty years. P.S. I also visited Spectral in Sunnyvale, and their shit is also awesome driving M6's.

[klaus@odyssey]

Yup, yup, yup and yup..................

Actually,  Magico has a boatload of our amps...........and right now they're all here in the shop for Kismet / Hyper power supply upgrades................

[whopnyc]

I have a new Quicksilver Remote Linestage and find I have no range with the volume control. It's pretty much loud or off. My speakers are 96 dB efficient so I know that also doesn't help. Mike at QS said the input impedance and gain don't match well. I found online in an old review (I believe) of an Odyssey amp that has input impedance at 22kΩ and gain of 30 dB.  Is that correct? I have always read something about the preamp to amp output to input impedance of 10x. In this case it would be 2.2x QS Linestage (output impedance 10k), so not ideal. Any thoughts on what can be done except buy a different preamp?

[klaus@odyssey]

Yes,  22k / 30 dB+  is correct,  and while there really isn't a mismatch with the QS  per se (as we have severla customers who run this combo without a hitch)  you have other things going on in your system here....really,  what would be easiest and what is worth trying is to get a  potentiometer with a different  value......worked with some Candelas in super high efficient speaker systems in the past

[whopnyc]

Klaus, I sent you an email but can you explain what you mean and what I would need? I figured putting the answer here may help someone else.  Thanks!

[JackD]

Your issue is not just the higher gain of the QLS (18 db) with the higher gain of the Odyssey but the entire three piece combination with the much higher than average sensitivity speakers at 96 db.  The mismatch would still exist if your speakers were more in the "normal range" of 86-88 db but it would be less noticeable.  There are a couple of simple ways to "correct" the mismatch if you want to continue with the QLS.  The cheapest ways I know would be to try the $49 Schitt Sys or the Rothwell Attenuators which are last I looked $69.

https://www.schiit.com/products/sys

http://www.rothwellaudioproducts.co.uk/html/attenuators.html

You may also be able to find Pro Audio versions of the attenuators at places like Guitar Center, Sweetwater, etc. to see if you like the way they work and if not maybe return them.

[whopnyc]

Thanks for the reply, JackD. That Sys looks interesting. Real cheap to try.

[JackD]

Your welcome.  I've owned four different Odyssey amps over the last 20+ years and with their high gain/low input sensitivity matching with tube preamps can be tricky.  Once you get it work out it will be worth it.

[Pars]

I used to run a Counterpoint SA5.1 preamp with my Stratos Plus which worked quite nicely. Not so much with a Marsh 400 that I auditioned. This combo sounded like dog doo doo. My wife told me if I bought that amp, it had better come with a lawyer. 

[JDMizzike]

I use a Primaluna Dialogue with upgraded tubes.

[JDMizzike]

I'm running the Primiluna Dioluge with upgraded tubes on my (2020) Kismet monos.