What's after Supratek

If you can live without a remote, I think Tbg would recommend the H-Cat; he used to have a Syrah and felt it was not even in the same league. Check the threads under H-Cat. I can attest that it is something special. My one experience with the VAC was positive sonically, competitive with my JP80MC, but the version I borrowed did not have a balance control or dual volume pots, an omission I understand from a purist point of view but which made it unacceptable to me from a practical point of view.

I had mentioned some of my impressions of it in Tbg's thread. I heard it on a number of occasions in Anna Logg's system, and helped the family sell it when she passed away a little over a year ago. The version I heard was not the current one, but even then you could tell the unit got the dimensionality, timbre, dynamics, soundstaging and other little things right in a way I'd only associated with tubed equipment. Valerie (Anna) seemed to prefer it over her BAT VK50SE in many respects. I would have bought it myself from the estate as a spare in case my Jadis JP200 went down, but my interconnects were just too thick, heavy and bulky to work with it, since the rca jacks are close together and the unit itself is so light. It is the only solid state preamp I've heard that has the sound of a true high-end (think Jadis, Lamm, BAT, CJ) tubed preamp--we're not talking syrupy sweet, but we are talking about an airiness and rightness in the highs and a harmonically right midrange; that's why I suggested it here. But I'm pretty sure it doesn't have a remote. I think you'll really like it; give it a little time to warm up and break in, but it sounded really good about an hour after being turned on when I first heard it.

Dennis, I forgot to mention the best thing about the VAC was the way the logo, which is pretty large, changed color from blue to red when the unit was muted. Really distinctive and neat-looking.