Esoteric C03 preamp or Mark Levinson 326S preamp- ANY and ALL FEEDBACK / HELP PLEASE

previously owned a 326s and thought it superlative. loved everything about it. wish i’d kept it instead of continual trading!

Thanks guys - yes you guys maybe right where I probably should not blame tubes in general. Its just that I have for the first time have found both bloom and warmth now with my speaker, cables, dac, amp combo which I always needed tubes in chain to get there.

I just never got this close to the type of sound I want without tubes so want to see how far I can push it along.

I think the main reason for me now as it relates to my past experience is that with my new speakers - Magico S5 are just so transparent that they really provide a true transparent window to my source at a level I have never known before and I love the sound of my source. Bricasti M1SE, dynamic but warm and musical yet also super transparent itself. I think before these speakers I had needed a tube pre to spice things up so the speakers preferred the mix.  

Now it is like - my speakers - expose - and show naked everything in there where they like a little richer, full sounding cable as long as the cable has those things as small little ads but as in themselves quite transparent. My cables are now Kubula-Sosna Emotions. These are a bit fuller than I would have wanted but man this system is so sensitive. The slightest leaning either way is laid thread bare. It's great from the standpoint that I love transparency but so hard to dial in with such a finicky micro-scope of a system lens.  

A little shading here of there to just nudge the sound a bit here or there but anything more than nudge turns into a sort shunt or muting or adding a veil and the sound goes backwards. Much more than I would ever had thought. I have been playing with a hand full of different and IC's and am amazed how similar sounding IC's were before now completely change everything. So rather than a nudge here of there a certain IC is like through wet a towel over my speakers or they become bright and just the magic disappears here before they added a nice bit of this or that and now can't even be considered. Kind of painful but also appreciate it just not used to it,  

I've never experienced this level of transparency or I guess you could say pickiness also. I mean that is probably not accurate per say but yes if my rig doesn't like it then it basically hates and tells you. I mean if I was a reviewer this might be good because everything is under a micro-scope but on same hand this new item might sound like crap here and be nice in another system so I am really in the land of trial and error. I know everything is system and room dependent but this is at a level I am not used to at all.   

All this said I am looking to add those things that have a pretty dang transparent nature as for it to just fit in and then my hope is whatever character it has will be work ok when thread bare. So if the ML pre is sort of laid back I may really like it and if the C03 is up front i may really like it or I could dislike either for this same very reason. So picky.

So to blame tubes is probably wrong but to advance things I am also walking a bit more careful knowing what I know now about how picky this thing has become.

That is why I am thinking of staying away from tubes. Playing the odds. I think I can get there with tubes but the sound im looking for tubes wise would be out of my price range I think. ARC REF 5SE or maybe a newer higher end VAC.

I am thinking one of the SS would be a better but I also think the right tube amp that is super transparent but adds just a bit of that tube goodness would probably be incredible the question what tube amp is that. What is the most transparent tube preamp. The one that just adds a bit of tubes but is super transparent. That one would be awesome. Now the problem is I bet that tube preamp is double or triple the cost of an SS version.   

I enjoy reading about your Audio journey- fsmithjack
at your level of gear in performance and price, listen to as much gear as you can (even if you have to road trip it). This is the best part of our hobby.
Happy Listening!

 I would stay away from ARC because they are at their limits working with the Pass Labs amps. So 

ARC Pre and Pass Amps are legendary together, were did this come from. I ran the original ARC Ref 1 with the Pass 350 years ago and it was fantastic. Their are many many happy threads on this combo.

Try the ARC Ref 5SE.

I suspect that Ralph’s statement about ARC preamps being "at their limits working with the Pass Labs amps" refers to the fact that most ARC preamps and line stages have a recommended minimum load impedance of 20K, as can be seen in the specs for a great many of their models that are posted at arcdb.ws. Although ARC's specs don't make clear if that recommendation applies to balanced or unbalanced interconnections, or both. While many Pass amps have input impedances spec’d at 20K unbalanced/30K balanced (although the input impedances of most or all of the latest Pass models are much higher).

So I believe Ralph was referring to impedance compatibility between many ARC and Pass models as being marginal. Of course, "marginal" probably means that a reasonable case could be made both for and against.

Regards,
-- Al