What preamp creates the largest soundstage?


I have always loved a large soundstage.  I have a small listening room (10x10) and have mini-monitors, driven by a tube amp.  I have played a lot with speaker placement, room acoustics, listening position to create a large soundstage.  I have rolled tubes on the amp and made dramatic improvements. (I have purposely left details on the brands of tubes, amp and speakers out, because I don’t want side comments to distract from my question)

i have a digital source into a solid state naim preamp.  I home demo’ed a well reviewed preamp, and was surprised at how much the soundstage shrunk, both side to side and top downward.  It was deeper, and did have much of the tube magic, but I could not live without the big soundstage.  

so my question is, does anyone have experience with a preamp that produces a big soundstage?  I am looking for recommendations on what to demo next. While I lean toward tubes, I am open to solid state.  I am okay either new or used, and could spend in the 5k range, but would be happy to spend less.  Also comments on specific brands (i.e. xyz is known to have great soundstage in all their preamps) as opposed to models, are welcome.

and I will be the first to admit that perhaps the very large soundstage is not “accurate”to real music, but boy is it seductive and I love it and can’t live without it.

meiatflask
line stage, phono not needed, must have remote.
@meiatflask
Based on your budget, our MP-3 line stage is our most likely candidate.
I have recently upgraded to the Rhumba 1.3 standard version. The change in my average sensitive system is profound. I am amazed at the life-like presentation that this preamp brought to my system. I highly recommend this preamp.
Doubtful question.
"Sound stage" comes from the recording, it is not "created" in the pre-amp, power-amp, the interconnects, or the speakers.
Equipment can only reveal or hide what was included in the recording. They cannot magically add what was not there. Close miked multi track overdubbed piece o crap recordings are dime a dozen. Nice acoustic balanced recordings are not that common. Few people ask for or appreciate it.
Don’t forget speaker placement and room treatments for minimizing reflections. Reflections will smear the image if one was there to begin with. 

I will agree but only partialy, yes recording plays huge part in creating soundstage but preamp is egually important. Even best recording from eg chesky records will sound flat, 2d if preamp is not capable of creating holographic, 3d soundstage. I have own preamp from Rotel, Rogue Audio, PrimaLuna, Hegel and currently testing Cyrus. Rotal and Rogue could not create 3d image at all. Primaluna is one of this that acctualy can create soundstage extending beyond and allow speakers to disappear but not at the same level with Hegel or Cyrus. Hegel projects huge, deep, 3d image in all directions, can easily hear sounds to sides of listening position as there were surrounds speakers present, floorstanders complitly disappears leaving only surrounding sound. Cyrus is eqally good but image is moved forward, soundstage is more in front towards the listener and depth shrinks. All this preamp where inserted to exactly same system, cables etc only preamp was changed. Still in quest for preamp, to see what can best hegel p20 and cyrus dac xp with psx-r, both brilliant in this respect. 
I do not think electronics create sound stage. They may be able to harm it but I do not know that for a fact. The job for electronics is to replicate whatever the source is and then perhaps modify it in a very specific way. Some tube electronics give you a sense of more depth which I think is why a lot of us like them but it is a distortion of the truth. The Atmasphere and ARC preamps do not do this. I think the MP 3 is a great choice.
As for as SS preamps go and if you really want to have a wild time with your system and are computer savvy check out the Anthem STR. Anthem is a Canadian company. This preamp has effective room control and great bass management. You will see exactly what your system is doing and learn what changes do to the sound. It is an incredible learning experience and the improvement is sound quality is very noticeable , particularly the imagine. The frequency response of any two speakers is not identical. On top of this they are in different locations in the room which generally separates them even more. I have seen identical speakers vary up to 10 dB at points. This smears the image as whichever speaker is loudest at any given frequency will own that frequency. You literally have part of an instrument coming from the right, part in the middle and part in the left with obvious results. Room control makes the speakers in their locations perfectly identical with obvious results. Then there is digital sub woofer management. There is no better way to easily integrate subwoofers. Not only can you choose cross over points and slopes but the frequency response of the subs is made flat and identical at the listening position and they are perfectly time and phase aligned with the satellites. The subs disappear and all you have is great bass.
This type of device scares the analog guys. IMHO there is no analog preamp that can compete with the Anthem STR or the Trinnov Amethyst a much more expensive unit made in France. I use a TACT 2.2X. TACT unfortunately went out of business years ago due to poor management
and a bad business model for that type of device. Boz (Radomir Bozevic) assumed that his customers were as smart as he was and that everything was obvious, a very bad assumption. He became swamped with customer questions and complaints. His owner manuals were particularly poor. Those of us that had an idea of what we were doing had to learn on the fly. I watched the forum and guess that 50% of the people really had no idea what to do or what they were doing which is understandable given the complexity of the units. The newer Anthem and Trinnov units have been simplified. You can get into the nitty gritty if you so desire but most will not. The Trinnov is usually set up by the dealer. The microphone costs $800 and is an option. With the Anthem you get everything. It is a much better value.