Primare PRE35 Prisma STREAMING PREAMPLIFIER

Hygge might not be the first word that comes to mind when contemplating the Primare PRE35 Prisma preamplifier, but in Limhamn, Sweden, that is how Primare likes to describe their products.

It means “cozy,” and it’s a very important concept in the Nordic countries, almost a way of life. Another term that appears in Primare’s product descriptions is lagom, which loosely translates as “not too little, not too much—just right.”

For me, none of this is lost in translation. I’m all for folksy adjectives for high-tech equipment. After spending hygge time with the new PRE35 Prisma preamplifier, I’ve come to equate hygge with “not digital-sounding” and lagom with the elegance of its physical and electronic design: not too little, not too much.

By modern hi-fi standards, Primare has been in business for a while. Founded in Sweden in 1985 by Bo Christensen and Bent Nielsen, Primare takes a team approach to research and development: Specialists work on different technical aspects of their designs, then Nielsen, Primare’s chief engineer, pulls everything together. Primare was an early adopter of class-D amplification; my colleagues Kal Rubinson and Herb Reichert have both explored this aspect in recent reviews of Primare amplifiers.1 Primare is also known for being ahead of the game in exploring digital audio storage and streaming technology, capabilities fully implemented in the PRE35 Prisma.