My complaint was similar to @yyzsantabarbara , though it was not noise that you could necessarily hear. It was just that backgrounds were not dark and everything had a little haze around it. I did some research and the big upgrade to the next generation included transistors with a huge decrease in noise. I suspect the newer version was/is much better.
I followed that with the Benchmark LA4. I liked this preamp, and it was great for low volume listening, but it is just too stark and sterile for my tastes. The Pass XP-12 was wonderful.
I only switched away from Pass/Coda when I fell into a deal on some Audionet gear, a whole different ball game.

