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What preamp creates the largest soundstage?

I have always loved a large soundstage.  I have a small listening room (10x10) and have mini-monitors, driven by a tube amp.  I have played a lot with speaker placement, room acoustics, listening position to create a large soundstage.  I have rolled tubes on the amp and made dramatic improvements. (I have purposely left details on the brands of tubes, amp and speakers out, because I don’t want side comments to distract from my question)

i have a digital source into a solid state naim preamp.  I home demo’ed a well reviewed preamp, and was surprised at how much the soundstage shrunk, both side to side and top downward.  It was deeper, and did have much of the tube magic, but I could not live without the big soundstage.  

so my question is, does anyone have experience with a preamp that produces a big soundstage?  I am looking for recommendations on what to demo next. While I lean toward tubes, I am open to solid state.  I am okay either new or used, and could spend in the 5k range, but would be happy to spend less.  Also comments on specific brands (i.e. xyz is known to have great soundstage in all their preamps) as opposed to models, are welcome.

and I will be the first to admit that perhaps the very large soundstage is not “accurate”to real music, but boy is it seductive and I love it and can’t live without it.

meiatflask
oddiofyl's avatar
oddiofyl
1,076 posts
 
I have a c-j Classic 2SE and love it too... I have found that with all my sources, DAC , and Vault 2i having remote volume the lack of remote on the Classic is not really such a big deal... this pre checked all the boxes for me. Simple, just volume , source , and power switch. Sounds phenominal, I auditioned mine in a $50k plus system and it was right at home with much more expensive gear downstream.

A few days after I got it I contacted C-J on a Friday night , Saturday morning I got an email from Dr Lew Johnson thanking me for choosing c-j and he went on to say in his opinion the Classic 2SE was one of the biggest bang for the buck products they’ve made. He gushed like a proud Papa. They are a good value on the used market .
rollintubes
44 posts
 
I have a room the same size. I have a Prima Luna Dialogue Pro HP (KT150’s) and the Dialogue Pro preamp going into ATC SCM19’s. I have the speakers in a "near field" position in an equilateral triangle at 5’ c/c and 5’ from my head. The sound stage is perfect. I can listen, literally, all day with no fatigue. My source is analogue, although I do listen to some digital if I need some background while I work with my music collection..

I can listen to Bill Evans at the Village Vanguard and I am in the audience. I listen to Grateful Dead and Bobby spit on me. For this small a listening area I would never have believed that I would be able to get such good sound. The key was setting the speakers just right, until I did that I had an awful time with reverb and image.

The synergy of the Dialogue Premiums gives a seamless wire with gain to the ATCs. Give Kevin a call. He will fix you up. I think that you will be very happy.

Rollin
aolmrd1241
759 posts
 

meiatflask  said... "I have not heard that the Primaluna preamps are anything special."

Audiojan ...I can not say enough good things about my PL Dialogue Premium preamp.It really does hit the high mark musically [tons of info online] and is a tube rollers delight. To be able to fine tune with vintage tubes is a huge bonus over ss. Oh...and you could fly a 747 through the soundstage in my system...

tomcarr
530 posts
 
"One man's 'big' is another man's 'nothing special'", but...I think my Schiit Freya does a nice, big, 3-D soundstage with some air around the notes when used in the tube mode. (It has 3 selectable modes- passive, JFET buffer, and tubes). Nice finish, nice sound, nice price and made in America. 
meiatflask OP
58 posts
 
Rollintubes- I have my speakers in a near field set up, and have spend countless hours tweaking my room.   Sounds like you are in full agreement with me that getting the speaker and listener position optimized is the most important step.  And we have the same amp, (I am currently running KT77s & mullard NOS 12au7s), with tube selection having also made a big difference for me.   But I don’t want this to get into a tangent on tube rolling, as there are many other discussions on that subject.

but I have a question for you: have you tried other preamps beside the Primaluna?
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