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I'll briefly confess that this was another Polish product which surprised me positively though I should not be so surprised. It's been known for some time now that Polish manufactures are very capable of making gear which, although a lot less expensive, easily competes with more globally recognized brands. The problem for Polish manufacture lies in the attitude of Poles who prefer to buy foreign brands which will be easier to resell in the future. I can understand this pragmatic view yet this game is also about sound, isn’t it?
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May I ask you then to abandon prejudices against Polish products and not assume right off that you will upgrade your system within a year or two again? Give products like the TP-01 from Audiomatus a chance. To be honest, if today I were to decide on a preamp for my ModWright KWA100SE, I'd have a hard nut to crack. The LS100 from the same manufacturer is objectively slightly better and functionally its advantage is clear but the sonic matter is merely slight yet the price difference is more than double! Looking at it from the other side, the Audiomatus does everything at least competently whilst its dynamics, transparency and speed compare favorably with products on an even higher shelf than my ModWright. For less than 5.000 zlotys I do not see any competition for it and pairing it with power amplifiers worth tens of thousands of zlotys will not be any misalliance. It's simply a great product.
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Design. The TP-01 is a tubed preamplifier from Audiomatus. The device is housed in an enclosure which stylistically matches their power amplifiers. The front panel is a 12mm aluminium plate in clear-anodized silver with four aluminium knobs. The two outer larger ones function as the input selector and volume control. One of the two smaller center knobs is the main power switch, the other the balance control. On the rear panel is an IEC connector with integrated fuse, two pairs of RCA line-level outputs and five pairs of analog RCA inputs. The very solid gold-plated Teflon-insulated connectors come from Vampire Wire. They are placed at reasonable distances from each other so even large plugs won’t be a problem.
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The rest of the enclosure is painted black and sits on four rubber feet. The enclosure is rigid and makes a very solid impression. The design is fairly simple yet elegant and the finish is at a high level. Care was given to such details as a slightly higher front panel or the black screws located on the top cover and side panels to make them less conspicuous. The interior also makes a very good impression because of its perfect order. Cables run along the walls and are held in place with clips. A shaft extender links the potentiometer located at the rear to the front panel volume control knob. In the signal path we find two 6N30Pi dual triodes, one per channel. The gain stage employs zero negative feedback (no cathode resistors or capacitors in the circuit). The tube grids are polarized with a long-life lithium battery. Anode voltage is stabilized via three-stage voltage controllers with an output impedance of less than one milli-ohm (0.001Ω) over the entire audio frequency range (20Hz to 20kHz) and a noise floor around two microvolts.
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Such characteristics make the power supply practically inaudible which usually cannot be said about many expensive tube devices. To reduce output impedance the two triodes inside each bottle are coupled in parallel. Tube operating conditions have been optimized for long service life which according to the manufacturer should be not less than 4.000 hours. The preamplifier's voltage gain is 10dB (approximately 3 x) and the minimum load impedance is 5kΩ. The TP-01 will work properly with power amplifiers with an input sensitivity of 1-2V and input impedance equal to or greater than 10kΩ.
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opinia @ highfidelity.pl
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Specifications according to the manufacturer:
Frequency response (CL = 100 pF, RL = 100 k): 2 Hz-230kHz (+/- 0/-3 dB) | 3Hz-170kHz (+/- 0/-1 dB)
Input impedance: 22kΩ
Output impedance (Zs = 100Ω): 700Ω
Dimensions with handles, legs and sockets: 440 x127 x 388mm WxHxD
Weight: 10kg
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