Whats the ultimate goal with your pre amp ?

If the preamp is the heart of the system, what's the pancreas?

In many ways, the preamp makes or breaks the system. Too much gain and there are problems. Too little gain is also problematic. Wonky input or output impedances also lead to troubles down the road matching other components. Not enough input or output connections are a headache as well.....

Choose wisely. 

@krelldog I’ve not yet heard an active preamp that didn’t color the sound. If you ever ran your source direct into your amplifier at unity gain vs it going thru an active linestage, you would most likely hear flatter, colder and more analytical sound. A good linestage would help round some of the rough edges off, paint a more layered and dimensional soundstage, do few good things to the mids without losing clarity and most likely improve the bass. All the good colorations. I don’t think your preamp is an overkill by any means.

Take a peak inside to see how the design is and what parts are used. How is the power supply? My guess is that you will find while some are more robust that others, the overall parts are close to being the same so overall the sound differences are not so much better. That is why you have to learn what makes the a component sound the way it does. Once you understand that, you can then find components that are much better then the average manufactured products you are considering.

As for how a preamp colors the sound, well all preamps have their own sound characteristics.    There are preamps that can do both but again you have to know what to look for in the design. 

Thanks for all the great responses. Let me clarify...I do fully understand the value of a great preamp. Part of the reason for this topic was to identify some world beater preamps that don't cost a fortune.

The mention of the Benchmark and the Sanders preamps were interesting. Neither has ever been on my radar. Its nice to know you can get this level of performance for 5K or less.