Rwwear, if you look at their website they lump all of them in the category preamplifiers and all have preamplifier in their name.. Even if they did describe them as you say, which they don't, just because AR calls them one thing does not make it so. Calling a pig a horse does not make it a horse.
http://www.audioresearch.com/products.html
Dopogue, saying "pre means it comes before" doesn't mean it describes everything that comes before. If I say something is in the pre civil war era it is understood that is the time leading up to the war, not everything that ever happened before; AND it is not the war that came before the civil war as some here would have you believe.
Kirkus is correct. It is a silly argument. It is well understood what it means. It is the box that goes between the source(s) and the power amp. It can be as simple as some jacks for in/out and a volume control and you can add what you want from there; input selector, active buffers, active gain stages, tone controls, phono stage, balance control, loudness function, etc.
http://www.audioresearch.com/products.html
Dopogue, saying "pre means it comes before" doesn't mean it describes everything that comes before. If I say something is in the pre civil war era it is understood that is the time leading up to the war, not everything that ever happened before; AND it is not the war that came before the civil war as some here would have you believe.
Kirkus is correct. It is a silly argument. It is well understood what it means. It is the box that goes between the source(s) and the power amp. It can be as simple as some jacks for in/out and a volume control and you can add what you want from there; input selector, active buffers, active gain stages, tone controls, phono stage, balance control, loudness function, etc.