Most Quiet TUBE Preamp. Linestage. $ 12K or less

My comments above are only to exxagerate the differences enough to give some idea of what I thought I heard, but I wouldn't want someone to think that BAT is lean or ARC warm. That would be misleading for sure.

Well said.

Regards,

Thanks for the brief descriptions Matt. It sounds like it made for an interesting day, a shoot out between those three preamps, I wish I was there. :)

Sure...I wish I had more to offer in the descriptions, but it was my first time hearing Chris's system and with changing between 3 preamps and a fair amount of new music, it was a lot to get my head around. One thing is for sure, the music all sounded really great that day...which reminds me, I need to find the cello piece that Guido brought, cuz it was killer, but I can't remember who it was.

The Audio Horizons TP 2.0nB, a balanced tube line preamplifier, has superb signal to noise level in each channel. My unit is -115 dBv or better. It's musical, relatively inexpensive (~3K), and you can try it in your own system before committing to buy it.

I think Matt does a great job summing things up... It's funny how you read these reviews in magazines (or sometime posts on Agone) that tell how component X just killed component Y and it's the BEST ever, etc. Then you have a chance to hear three highly regarded preamps into the exact same system (AC line, w/the same IC's, etc). and the differences are so small that it would really come down to personal preference (for example I would like to have the ARC's remote, but can't stand that crazy neon display).

Yeah, I own the system, room and most of the music we played and, like Matt, I was still suffering the quandry of getting my head around it all....

To try to add some additional thoughts on things though... To my ears the ARC had slightly deeper soundstage than the Aesthetix, and the BAT. I think the Aesthetix had a bit wider presentation than either of the others, with less imaging hanging on the speakers (the speakers dissappeared as a source a little more).

I think the Aesthtix and ARC were a little more extended than the BAT up top, but the Aesthetix sounded sweeter to me... It felt more "right" like my easy chair compared to someone elses. I think Guido had the opposite take and it's probably down to what you are used to.

.... The funny thing is, right now I am messing with tube rolling (again) in the Callisto and I can probably make as large of a difference to the sound of things as the differences between all of these killer preamps ;-))

Chris