For anyone reading this thread after the fact, some thoughts come to mind. Starting a thread here(or most audio forums) and asking an open ended question like what budget preamp should I buy, is not going to be very helpful as you can see above. Dozens of different suggestions with little consensus.
If you’re putting together a system, you should start by selecting the speakers, everything flows from that decision. Buying an amp or pre unheard because the price is right is rolling the dice and losing. I know this because I have lost more than a few times.
After deciding on the speakers, you need to find an amp and pre that will compliment the speakers. That’s because it’s very possible to get components that clash with the speakers. That is, they do not sound good with a particular speaker for many possible reasons.
So if you’re going to next start a search for amp or pre amp or integrated to go with your brand of speakers, that would be a good specific question to start a thread with(in fact, put the brand and model of the speaker in the title). You will still get plenty of suggestions from people who do not own the speakers, but they are easier to weed out so you can get feedback from actual speaker owners.
I would not recommend the above NAD C162(or any other NAD components from that era). It is about 15 years old, was designed when Nad had recently come out of a near bankruptcy and was making really cheaply designed gear. I had the C372 and the 12 years later built C326BEE was easily better sounding.
