Hornshoppe "the Truth" preamp - any opinions?


"The Truth" changes the paradigm in Reference Line Stages, literally. Its existence has even forced me to remove a "Direct Connection" in "Class A", because such a choice no longer makes any rational sense to me. In the end, "The Truth" is effectively a "direct connection" with no sonic downsides, and with the ability to drive any amplifier load and/or length of cable, while allowing any source to be heard at its very best. With the exception of extra gain, an audiophile can't ask for more than that. I realize that this may all sound "too good to be true", but it isn't. 

-- Arthur Salvatore  http://www.high-endaudio.com/RC-Linestages.html

This is high praise indeed, he likes it better than Coincident's Line Stage which is saying something, was wondering if someone else has heard it and compared it to other active line stages (am a big believer in active, though currently using AMR DP-777 DAC as my pre)
essrand
@ebm You can have one built in any designer cabinet eye candy you desire for an up charge so you can benefit too.

   LP
@len067  Hi Len, first a small correction. I actually did not start this thread, it was Essrand. I just answered his inquiry. 

As time has past my impressions have not changed much on the performance of this line stage. I had mine built with just a single input and output, use a Triode Wire Labs 10+ PC, Herbie's footers, Herbie's cable dampeners, and now just like Markwatkiss have 7lbs of weight on top that also has Herbie's grungebuster dots.

This unit has the best see into quality of any pre-amp I've had in house. This just gets me closer to the "you are there" that most of us strive for. Now I hesitate to say this but it's where I'm at. I recently purchased Tekton Electrons, along with a new amp and am working with them now. The Electrons sound excellent except I'm having problems with the upper bass down through the mid bass it seems. Tunefully wrong and hollowed out to boot. The speakers are too close to the front wall and partially to a side wall. I never had this kind of problem with my Spendors. I'm guessing it could be due to the Spendors being front port and the Electrons having large rear ports. The speakers need to stay in this location for a while longer.

With that being said, I listened with my Doge because I needed additional gain, and found 1 musical reference point that under the circumstances I described above preferred the Doge over the Truth. It was with piano reproduction. It could be because the Doge is a little bass heavy IMHO, or the set up problem with the Electrons or that it is a better performer in this regard or something else that IDK.

As other people have stated, without attention to a lot of detail in your play back system it could come off too revealing and possibly display some warts. In this regard I feel it's a great barometer. If I needed a line stage I would buy it again in a heartbeat.

   LP

I would be remiss if I did not do a follow up in reference to my last post here.
After seemingly endless time on the musical merry-go-round, I'm finally back in a very good place. Changes, add-ons, and or adjustments included, upgraded the Electrons to the Double Impacts, Had Inspire SEP amp, power cable, speaker cables, additional speaker decoupling, along with room acoustic and internal speaker tweaking. 
Going from a 4 corner, to a 6 point location for speaker decoupling cleaned up the low end tuning and lack of control that was being exhibited with both the Electrons and the D.I.'s.(I had previously feared that it might be a room set up problem.)
Somewhat surprising to me was the significant improvement of the Achilles heel I have had with the Truth line stage. The problem with piano simply not sounding like one was frustrating to me because otherwise the Truth is IMHO simply outstanding. By simply changing from the Western Electric speaker cable to the Duelund DCA  has brought the piano in line with the rest of the  musical performance.

      LP

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