good tuner

nasaly unnatural sounding midrange

I guess I would concede that this preap with an Adcom power amp would be a step up from a receiver. I use th GTP450 with the 5400 amp in a secondary system. I was looking for someting in the Adcom price range that would play loud without piercing my ears with distortion. I am using the system in a workout room. Not much critical listening going on. I heard all the rave about the 750 but in comparison at the store there wasn't enough difference to justify the money. I like the tuner, it has good reception & open sounding for a tuner. I wanted to see what this system could do one night & brought in some jazz & nie sounding CDs. I noticed that piano sounded horrible. It wasn't loud enough for anything to be overdriven. The mids sounded grainy like when your voice goes through a fan. More subtle though. I am using a 20 bit Denon cd player in this system. Well I wanted to see where the problem was, so I began to take each piece into my listening room & put them in my krell system. Some observations already made showed thrugh as I hooked the preamp between my cd player & through input on my amp. The preamp is bass heavy, the highs were pretty good for this price, the mids were nasally like coming through a horn. I didn't notice the graininess as much but piano was still unnatural sounding. Soundstage in general was not as spread out. Like I mentioned earlier this piece may be better than a receiver but it's not your answer to trying to buy high end on a budget. If it was going to be my main system I would sacrafice some horsepower & buy Arcam or something along those lines that would offer more accurate reproduction & musicality for the money. On the other hand if your ears aren't that critical & you want tons of bass & to play your music loud then give the Adcom a shot. I don't use all the inputs offered but I haven't had any problem with bleed through. I like the styling of this unit & it is sturdy. Don't seem to hold it's value on resale.

Similar Products Used:

krell, arcam, yamaha, kenwood