Check out Tortuga Audio. I have not heard the equipment and can’t speak about sound quality but it might meet your technical needs.

An output impedance of 1250 ohms is suitable for driving any input impedance of
5000 ohms or higher. As a general rule, the loading is usually not significant as long as the output impedance is 25% or less of the input impedance being driven.

An acive preamp will typically have an output impedance of less than 1K ohms, which is preferable.

I recommend that you get the Schitt Freya preamp, which is an excellent preamp for only $699, and it has five inputs; two balanced and three unbalanced inputs and balanced and unbalanced outputs too. It is an unheard of value and should be ideal for you.

Its output impedance is 75 ohms for the unbalanced outputs and 600 ohms for the balanced ones.

Input impedances are 10K ohms.

This is obviously a tube preamp, not solid-state, but that shouldn't be an issue in your case.

Reggy wrote:

Hello everyone,

I've got a particular setup that I would like to finish off most likely with a solid state pre-amp.

Recently, I've decided to purchase the Denafrips ARES DAC after getting extremely positive feedback from the forums. I would like to use this in conjunction with my Genelec 8040B monitors which are active studio monitors.

It would have been ideal to use a passive preamp for this, however if I do I will have a bit of an impedance issue as the source to active monitors impedance ratio would be ~ 8 much less than a ratio of 20 or even 50 I would be safe with.

The specs of the Ares DAC and Genelec 8040B are as follows:

Analog Output: XLR at 4.4Vrms +-10% (Peak voltage calculated to be 6.22 volts)
Output Impedance of 1250 Ohms

Genelec 8040B Specs:
Crossover Section:
10 kOhm input impedance
Input level for maximum short term output of 100 cB SPL @ 1 M: Adjustable +6 to -6 dB (or 0.39 volts to 1.55 volts).

I plan to turn the input sensitivity knob full counterclockwise so as to reduce the input sensitivity to 1.55 volts.

It would have been ideal to have a passive pre-amp however as far as I can see they have 10 hOhm output impedances which is ideal for amplifiers with input impedances of 50 kOhms not 10 kOhms. I was originally thinking of going for this one:

https://luminousaudio.com/products/axiom-ii-passive-preamp-xlr

However again, unless it can be pre-modified to clear up my impedance issue it looks like solid-state pre-amps are my best choice.

In the end I will be looking for a solid-state preamp providing balanced inputs having an input impedance of 47K ohms or more, and providing balanced outputs having an output impedance of 200 ohms or less, that would be the most safe and conservative option to go. Ideally, it would very good if it didn't have that much gain, so that I can still have at least a good quarter turn of the knob until a comfortably good volume is reached.

Are there any pre-amps that can accommodate this situation?

Thanks.