For my current setup, I have Elac Carina line for floorstanding, center and surround speakers. The floorstanding speakers are powered by a NAD C268, which is in the pre-out on my Marantz SR5012 AVR. The center and surrounds are powered by the AVR. I am looking to add a turntable to the mix, but my AVR always does ADC then DAC even in ‘Pure Direct’ mode. I want to listen in pure analog.
I need advice on a purely analog stereo preamp that has home theater bypass and a phono stage input. As a nice to have, balanced outputs would be preferable to hook up to the NAD C268, but not required. This would allow me the ability to listen to stereo in pure analog and pass through to AVR for TV/HT usage. Down the road, I’d plan to add a DAC with MQA capabilities to hook up to this preamp but for now the AVR DAC is fine for my music streaming. My budget is sub $1,500.
