Dear Srajan, I just read your excellent review of the aune amp and have a question about the last page. On it you show the aune sitting above your Enleum and the text reports on the difference between amps. Did you by any chance also try running the aune into the Enleum by bypassing your amp's attenuator and using the aune as preamp? If so, did that give anything worthwhile extra? It's the only question I have. Everything else you covered beautifully. Thank you very much, Gregory
I did indeed and not mentioning it explains that it was no good. One, I had ridiculously too much gain so could barely use step one on the Aune. Once I set the Enleum to half mast, I could actually use the combo but still suffered what I call gain poisoning. Even though I had no audible noise so no hiss or hum through the drivers, there was clear evidence of a higher noise floor. There was dirt and grain in the backdrop and the sonic gestalt felt bloated and lazy. That experiment lasted a mere few minutes and was more reason to call out my own ill-suitedness to comment much on the aune's preamp utility. My systems simply don't need them and the best a preamp could hope for is doing nothing – in which case, why bother? Once one must accommodate multiple sources to switch between them regularly, that situation changes but the Enleum has two standard inputs to begin with; and for regular single-input amps, I have my icOn autoformer passives which merely control volume and input switching but don't otherwise leave a sonic trace. Srajan
