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PS Audio StellarGold Preamplifier
Preamplifiers act as the backbone of premium audio setups, overseeing input choices, initiating the amplification process, managing volume and balance, and ensuring electrical separation between sound sources and amplifiers. When you add the StellarGold Preamplifier into your audio chain—bridging devices like DACs, phono preamps, tuners, or other auxiliaries with your amplifier—a magical sonic revelation unfolds: more realism, life, and space around each performer. It's time to take control of your system and add that missing element, a great preamplifier. StellarGold.
Upgrade your system performance
The StellarGold Preamplifier is the backbone of premium audio setups, overseeing input choices, initiating the amplification process, managing volume and balance, and ensuring electrical separation between sound sources and amplifiers. This extraordinary product adds a new level of realism, life, dynamics and punch to your high-end audio system. StellarGold Preamplifier should be the heart of any great system. Come learn more about this extraordinary preamplifier.
Design
The StellarGold Preamplifier features two hand crafted discrete audio amplification stages, both enjoying extremely high slew rate, high bandwidth, low distortion signal handling capabilities that honor the music. Based on a combination of JFET and BJT devices along with hand-selected purist components, the musical signal is delivered without the interference of capacitors in the signal path. Each amplification stage is based on a minimal global feedback design that achieves its low distortion status through careful balancing and high current design choices. Lastly, its high current class A output stage is more than capable of driving long cable lengths without compromise so that your power amplifier enjoy all the benefits StellarGold Preamplifier has to offer.
Application
Preamplifiers are the heart of any standalone audio system, controlling musical sources like DACs, phono preamps, and tuners. Bridging these sources to your power amplifier without adding any kind of sonic thumbprint is a challenge the StellarGold preamplifier takes on without any hesitation. Life, energy, and a sweet analog presentation are at the heart of this remarkable piece of equipment's performance. The StellarGold Preamplifier features 4 identical balanced and single ended inputs, and converts all input signals into a balanced signal for the lowest possible distortion, and can be used in a two-channel audio system or as part of a home theater system.
Technology
The StellarGold Preamplifier is a remarkably musical instrument. It is an excellent uncompromised interface between your sources and power amplifier. Designed by Darren Myers, the StellarGold outperforms preamplifiers at anywhere near its price. Preamplifiers play a critical role in any separates audio system, strategically positioned between sources of music: CD players, phono preamps, DACs, tape recorders and tuners – and your power amplifier – the preamp serves essential roles of control and isolation. Control is simple in concept, but extraordinarily difficult to design in an acoustically transparent manner. Control duties such as input switching, volume, balance, and amplification can place unwanted acoustic thumbprints on the music if not designed with extraordinary care. The StellarGold is one amazing preamplifier that we can't wait for you to hear in your system.
At the heart of any preamplifier are the gain stage that provides the amplification, and the volume control that manages how loud or soft the music plays. Inside the StellarGold preamplifier is an all new high slew rate, low feedback, discrete JFET BJT hybrid that has remarkably low distortion without relying upon high levels of sound-squashing global feedback. Volume is controlled by a fully balanced precision electronic version of a stepped attenuator. A large, oversized high-current transformer feeds the StellarGold Preamp's power supply, which ensures that the unit can reproduce music with a wide dynamic range, without compression or distortion. Fully-balanced circuitry with a bandwidth that extends almost to DC on the low end and well above audibility on the high end are responsible for the effortless presentation of music StellarGold preamplifier owners will enjoy. Openness, transparency, increased space around instruments---voices come alive in ways most never thought possible.
The designer's goal was to build a high slew rate, high bandwidth, open-sounding amplification stage that imparts no sonic signature and produces natural, open, music with affectation. All inputs are balanced as soon as they enter the StellarGold Preamplifier. Input switching is accomplished through hand-selected double-pole double-throw, gold plated relays that we’ve chosen for their sonic neutrality. High-performance pure-analog audio products like the StellarGold Preamplifier benefit from the use of high grade Audiophile capacitors and the finest discrete parts. Hand crafted to measure and sound remarkable, this StellarGold preamplifier will bring an amazing level of performance to any level of purist audio system ever made. If you're interested in making audio magic, audition for yourself the remarkable StellarGold Preamplifier.
Features
Class A pure analog amplification
JFET and BJT discrete architecture
Fully balanced from input to output
Purist audio components throughout
Low global feedback
4x RCA single ended inputs
4 XLR balanced inputs
2 XLR balanced outputs per channel
2 RCA single ended outputs per channel
High slew rate amplification stage
Near perfect transient response
Extreme frequency limits from near DC to 200kHz
Darren Myers design
Oversized power supply
Multiple stage regulation
Volume and balance by precision stepped attenuation
2x output triggers
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Professional Reviews 92/100
Deliciously Crispy
Sound Quality
92/100
Build Quality
94/100
Features Connectivity
87/100
Value for Money
95/100
The StellarGold brings transparent, uncolored control with a lively, slightly forward musical presence, excavating low-level detail while casting an exceptionally wide soundstage. Jerry Del Colliano also found bass notably more present than respected rivals. Fully balanced circuitry, generous XLR/RCA connectivity, and tank-like metalwork make this a compelling high-end analog hub.
What Reviewers Are Saying
Pros
Transparent, detailed presentation with unusually expansive soundstaging and clear low-level textures.
Engaging, slightly forward balance delivers stronger bass presence and lively cymbal texture.
Fully balanced design with four XLR and four RCA inputs, matching outputs, and exceptionally stout build quality.
Delivers high-end performance at its price, with the reviewer judging it competitive with far costlier preamps.
&
Cons
Its intentionally simple analog feature set omits conveniences common at this price, such as room correction, an onboard DAC, phono stage, and HDMI.
The modest front-panel display is less visually ambitious than the larger OLED-style screens offered by some competitors.
SOUND QUALITY PERFORMANCE 92/100
The StellarGold is described as a notably transparent, uncolored preamp with a slightly forward, immediate presentation. Review listening also found unusually wide staging, stronger bass presence, and more audible low-level details such as snare brushes and cymbal texture.
Transparency Resolution
94/100
The reviewer says the StellarGold is designed to let listeners hear the music rather than add coloration, and found it more transparent than the Anthem STR and Pass Labs XP-22. Small details, including the swirl of brushes on a snare drum, came through with greater clarity.
Tonal Balance Musicality
90/100
Its presentation was a little more forward than the comparison preamps, bringing bass and cymbals closer to the listener. That added presence was presented as engaging rather than aggressive, with no complaint of overt coloration or fatigue.
Dynamics
88/100
The review suggests a lively, immediate character through its increased sense of closeness and more apparent instrumental textures. There is little direct discussion of large-scale dynamic swings, however.
Soundstage Imaging
94/100
The reviewer highlights the preamp's ability to reveal space around instruments, imaging, and small details. In the review system, the soundstage was described as as wide as the reviewer had heard in an acoustically imperfect room.
Assessments of Build Quality, Usability, and Overall Propositions.
Build Quality
94/100
The StellarGold is described as stout, with gorgeous metalwork and a chassis built like a tank. The reviewer also points to its heavy, oversized power supply and expects the unit to be built for a long service life.
Features Connectivity
87/100
This is a fully balanced design with four XLR and four RCA inputs, plus matching balanced and single-ended outputs. Its generous analog connectivity and balanced operation make it well suited to multi-source systems, though the review does not identify convenience features such as onboard digital conversion, phono capability, or headphone output.
Value for Money
95/100
At $4,000, the reviewer considers the StellarGold a meaningful but reasonable purchase and says it performs at very high levels for the money. It is specifically credited with delivering much of the performance expected from a $10,000 preamp, making it a particularly compelling option among ambitious high-end line stages.
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Authorized dealers for PS Audio StellarGold Preamplifier
- Advance Audio — in-store — Wichita, Kansas, United States (website)
- Altitudo Audio — online and in-store — Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada (website)
- Analogue Seduction — online and in-store — Whittlesey, England, United Kingdom (website)
- Audio Affair — online and in-store — Deritend, England, United Kingdom (website)
- Audio Excellence (CA) — online and in-store — Markham, Ontario, Canada (website)
- Audio Solutions - AU — online and in-store — Mascot, New South Wales, Australia (website)
- Audio Venue — online and in-store — London, England, United Kingdom (website)
- AUDIO VIDEO TODAY — in-store — Laguna Hills, California, United States (website)
- Audio Vinyl — online and in-store — Zürich, Zürich, Switzerland (website)
- Audiolife — in-store — Buren, Gelderland, Netherlands (website)
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