recommend full featured preamps?

Stick with the mcintosh.. Not even close to carver, carver is okay for 300 bucks used, but sometimes no remote, and the loudness turned on sounds like you are hitting a plastic garbage can in the garage... They have that goofy other mode I forget the name it adds some nice effect, some natural noise thing or something.. Harmonic something or other...

Anyway most of your Preamps with Bass only knob is just a 100 hz boost.. But with a mcintosh pre you get the 5 band eq, which the bass range knobs start at 30 hz which is very low and very nice to get that just slight bump in the room loading feel like a subwoofer, and then you can kick up the 80 hz as well, and the 120 hz range in the mid bass etc...

And Mcintosh has the variable loudness knob, so you can choose how much db in loudness you want to add, not just an on full blast loudness or off button. And the mcintosh sounds more full and warm in the SS realm nearly tube. And resale value in most cases is better you would barely loose anything if you decide to move on again.

Mapman,
I remember now its called the "Holography" circuit... Its pretty nice for those compressed recordings...
I was not really knocking the carver as it is for the price its not bad, you can find some of the Mcintosh pres for 500 to 700 with all the features from the late 80's early 90's same era that are a bit better for a couple hundred was all I was illustrating.

As for the Behringer its okay, but really a cheap piece that is a pain to work with for most people, too many gadgets and features that have nothing to do with straight 2 channel full range speaker useage, and results will vary with much time needed to sometimes get dialed in or be effective correctly.. And then buying one used for 150 or 200 bucks might as well go with a mcintosh, its a better unit period in my opinion, well built, and eliminates all the EXTRA cables and conversions from XLR to RCA using a unit from the Pro audio realm...