Recommendations sought!

[joeinid]

Originally Posted by mbovaird

A pass XP30? No tubes. Warm sound.

It is a superb preamp and frankly, I miss my XP30 more than my VAC. I can not believe it but the XP30 is simply amazing. It's going to take all I have to resist the upcoming Pass Xs preamp coming out.

[jdebonth]

Originally Posted by Elberoth

IMO by adding a preamp, you may gain something (like more texture, smoothed out hights) but you will also loose on microdynamics, transparency and resolution side.

You may have some system synergy problem, which sould be adressed by changing your amps / cabling, not throwing in a next non-perfect component, to compensate for the flaws.

Spot on. And in this case particularly so given the amp and speaker combo, you would be taking the sound in the wrong direction adding a pre for sonic reasons IMO.

[-E-]

Some of bzr's initial comments seem a bit contradicting. So, I will try to interpret what you want: solid low volume performance but still warm and forgiving, preferably on tubes as it appears that brightness is not your cup of tea. Especially with the digital rig you are currently running.

So, to add to what Elberoth and jdebonth are stating...

Since the reader wants to go even warmer and "forgiving" - keep the strads, ditch the 2301's for a MC2000 (if you can find one, and if you want to stay Mc), and use a C1000C+T or C500C+T (again if you want to stay Mc; if not there are plenty of other recommendations that we can come up with). You probably won't use the SS much, and frankly, I think of it as more of a gimmick than useful; if you like tubes get the tubes, if you like SS get SS. If you want both later easy enough to order. If you order now harder to sell (and that you may never wind up using one of them for the your ownership life of the product).

[Amado]

Go ARC all the way !!!!

[bzr]

Thanks for all the advice. The post is really to flush out any preamps that I have overlooked but still find what the consensus is from the majority. The actual match of gear will be my last deciding decision, I have had very detailed & transparent gear & also gear at the top of the digital heap. The rest of my rig is not going anywhere. By the way, does anybody have anything on the Veloce LS-1 Linestage?

[Cellindo]

The AYRE KX-R is an absolute reference even more for low level listening because of its volume technology.

The MBL 6011D is also one of the most impressive preamp on the market.

I don't know yet Jerome's Giscours but I be ready to bet some money that it belongs, musically, to the top of the league. However it has No XLR input and this is a big issue for me.

The cheapest preamp, but still excellent solution, I've ever experienced for volume attenuation is the Audirvana plugin on top of iTunes in a Mac-based configuration. The volume attenuation done with Izotope MBIT dithering is simply ridiculously good; everyone should try this high-end volume control solution at least once with no preconceived idea.

Let's not forget that with a CD or DAC source absolutely no one needs the function of a preamp. What is definitely necessary is volume attenuation; not any added gain at all..