Now streaming on iTunes and all podcast platforms. Looking for even more? Check out our “Best Of” awards in our year-end roundup on The Occasional Podcast. The Best Audio Accessories, Tweaks, and Voodoo.The Best Headphones, IEMs, and Headphone Amplifiers.The Best DACs, Servers, Streamers, and Disc Spinners.We can’t stop listening to the combination, and it may be one of the best preamplifiers we have auditioned.
As a follow-up, Dan D’Agostino has now brought many of these advances to the new D’Agostino Momentum HD Pre-amplifier. We fell in love with the D’Agostino Momentum Phono with its new input stage and ultra-quiet circuitry. Everyone loves turning that incredibly sexy volume knob, but that’s only the beginning of a design that we called an “end game product.” We felt the Prisma towered over most preamplifiers and blew such a hole in our PTA awards system that we had to invent a new one, the Summit Award, to put a spotlight on its excellence. (The Preos D adds a DAC and a phono pre.) The volume control is “fabulous,” the build quality is exquisite, and the sound is well, nothing, as a preamp should be. This might be the finest preamplifier we’ve ever used, solid-state or tubed, although we spent most of our time with the original Preos. Mactone amps have been made by the same gentleman in Japan since 1964, and the XX-7000 screams “bespoke” and “pride of ownership is off the charts.” No remote control–this is every bit a classic preamp design, but with a sound that suggests both vintage and state of the art. Maybe the most beautiful preamp we’ve seen, and its sound is equally sublime. With the matching Vitus RS101 power amplifier, we found that the RL102 delivered a “highly three-dimensional and fully fleshed-out soundstage.” Dig a little deeper and you’ll find a preamp that is extremely versatile. The RL102 is “a model of European simplicity and straight-forward sensibility,” meaning that it is no-nonsense in its approach. Definitely in consideration for being one of the best preamplifiers on the market regardless of topology. Sporting one of the largest displays we’ve seen on an audio product-you can easily read everything from 20 feet away-the Christine was a synergistic match with the Class-D Merrill Element 118 monoblocks and forced us to reconsider our bias against Class-D amplifier designs. Yes, you can get it with a fabulous phono stage as well. Perhaps that’s because of its super low noise floor, its hefty power supply or even its point-to-point wiring, but let’s face it-this preamp is filled with some of the finest parts money can buy such as Dueland caps and a tube-rectified choke input filter PSU. We’ve declared this the “best tubed preamplifier we’ve heard,” and we’ve heard a few. Still, this is a minimalist preamp in the finest sense-short signal paths, the best parts quality and a slick attenuator that makes us giggle with joy.īorderPatrol Control Unit EXT-1 ($12,250 USD) The new Control 2 is a bit more fancy-the automatic input selector, powered by 12V triggers, is now replaced with a more traditional push-button selector, and the remote control controls more than volume trim. The original Control preamp was as streamlined as it gets-there was only one knob on the front of the thing, and it was the attenuator. The single-stage volume control is a dream, by the way. Features are abundant, and yet the XP-12 is still incredibly easy to set-up and use. Like the matching XP-17 phono preamp, the XP-12 is incredibly neutral and does an impossibly great job at allowing you to hear what everything else in your system is doing. It even has a headphone amplifier, and if you know LTA you know it’s gotta be special. The MicroZOTL offers push-pull Class A operation and can be considered as a truly full-featured preamplifier. We get a tad giddy whenever we use LTA amps-these David Berning designs, based on his ZOTL topology, offer such a pure and beautiful window into the music. Linear Tube Audio MicroZOTL Preamplifier ($4,450 USD) Passives aren’t for everyone, but if you’re one of those people who are going “DAC direct” you might want to spend a few hundred bucks to get clean, clear sound-and all without a power cord. We described this small passive unit as a “volume control in a box,” and were amazed when it kicked the butt of a few very expensive preamplifiers.
#Audionotes mod
Luminous Audio Axiom II w/ Walker Mod ($499 USD)
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