Mar 12th, 2015
Q) What do you think of the Nikko Beta 30 Preamp?
A) The truth is any reasonably well designed preamp, regardless of what op amps or circuitry is in it will sound OK or excellent or terrible depending upon the expectations of the consumer. This preamp as well as many other better designed Japanese preamps were remarkable if careful gain staging to keep the noise down and quality components, switches, capacitors, etc. were used, proper grounding techniques and if careful circuit path of foils were done, would make for excellent preamp which was neutral in sound character. I stress the word neutral because preamps with basically flat, wide range frequency response with similar signal level at the output are almost indistinguishable from one another. By comparison many “esoteric” preamps often have subtle frequency response errors or crosstalk of left and right channel (leakage of audio signal especially in the high frequencies) which cause some subtle imaging anomalies. The irony being obvious, that some flawed designs were thought to sound “better” were in fact audible problems which “audiophiles” interpreted as better or superior sonics!!! So the answer is complex.
I do know this, when some of these basic preamps had minor upgrades done, replacement of aging capacitors, installation of improved RFI suppression at circuit areas and correction of grounding topology and admittedly certain crucial opamps were upgraded, these units became gems!!! They had lots of inputs, accurate tone controls and high quality controls and switches. Basically more usable features, easy to service or update and I think they had a good functional look, but that’s my opinion. The Beta series was well done. Some items have minor design flaws but nothing obvious. On this Beta 30 to make it an audiophile piece would be to change out a few op amps and other minor matters as suggested above. They would become world class items. Damn the critics they have never put side by side a Mac C22, and Audio Research SP6 a Marc Levinson and a Nikko or Technics preamp and an APT preamp and compared carefully after matching levels using the same speakers, amp, and room consistently. Indeed there are some differences but not $1000 worth. Point to be made, there is poorly done expensive stuff and well done cheap stuff but honest assessment from a true technical standpoint is sorely missing. I must stress than most electronics must be judged as to what is in the box not the name on the face plate. In 25 years of business I’ve seen a lot of fancy stuff go to the dump but the basic nuts and bolts designs are upgraded and fixed and survive. Like the APT preamp, Technics, and others. So if you want to keep it simpler and need the features don’t be afraid to buy well made Japanese stuff. It just needs a few easy updates.
I don’t want to name names too clearly, as it gets people ticked off, but in general the more people believe in some mythic properties of electronics, (mostly due to marketing) typically the product gets worse!! I can only pick and choose my favorites. Again sometimes a few modifications turn a $200 thing into a competitive $1000 thing. The beta 30 is a very competent design. The Beta 1 class A FET design (which is very rare) was probably the most remarkable preamp ever designed. It did sound different because it’s all class A FET design was… different. The Accuphase equipment is an engineering masterpiece. The Mac C22 tube unit is as good as it gets and it’s darn reliable. The APT preamp is the most flexible and charming in operation and use of special circuit where no RFI can get in and no crosstalk or hum loops can be created. As opposed to some very expensive “Au .Il.” whereby the tubes circuits will never work well unless serious corrections are done. Some “Co. Jo.” Is a mess with ground loop problems, parasitic interference ant thermal noise problems. I could go on but litigation lurks right around the corner. Read my comments about people perceptions of music and the problems inherent in music production, the preamp will not be thee deciding factor of fidelity.