Best Pre-amp under 7k

Please, the Thor is a turgid, dark sounding turd. I oughta know, I used to own the TA-2000. Next!! The best preamps I've heard by a longshot are the Lamm L1, the above-mentioned Hovland HP-100 (beautiful too!), and the First Sound Presence units. The Lamm is the most balanced of the three for various types of music and systems. The Hovland is wonderfully liquid and musical, but the bass is a bit soft and it can be a tad forward in some systems. It works great if you listen to a lot of jazz, light classical, and (especially) vocalists. The First Sound units have incredible dynamics, stupendous even--this is the one to get if you're into heavy rocking blues or full-scale orchestral pieces. They do have waaaaayyy too much gain though, so they are best matched with a power amp with low input sensitivity or you won't get any play at all in the volume control.

Get a CAT SL-1 Ultimate. It is the best preamp at $5950 or below (or above insofar as I have heard). If you like detail, well you'll get it, but not the screeching brightness that passes for detail with some other preamps. The mids are absolutely liquid, transparent, smooth and musical. There is no harshness brightness or grain anywhere. It has got superb dynamics, great 3D soundstage and great, great bass extension. It is a tube preamplifier that lets you have your cake and eat it too. It is absolutely dead quiet, and it has a world class phono section which rates with the best of the outboard phono preamps. Everything that the Hovland does very well, the CAT does significantly better, except I can see where one could rate the extreme highs of the Hovland over the CAT. I have a/b'ed CAT's vs. Lamm's (Lamm lost. Not nearly as musical), CAT vs. Hovland (Hovland loses. Seriously rolled off in deep bass. Not as dynamic as CAT.). I must admit to not having heard all of the previous preamps, like Thor and First Sound, but based purely on its sonic capabilities, I almost don't know how you could ask more of a preamplifier. If you don't believe me, check out the April May 2000 Absolute Sound, where Larry Alan Kay declares it his "first choice in preamps" or look at the August 1999 Stereophile where Robert Deutsch recommends putting the CAT Ultimate at the top of your short list. Your personal taste may lead you elsewhere, but I believe it would be a serious mistake to fail to audition this product.

Can anyone clue me in as to when the CAT Super Pooper Duper Ultimate is to be released? I'm sorry, but I cannot maintain respect for a manufacturer who "updates" his or her product on a seemingly monthly basis. It's a totally unfair practice for the customers who have put their money where their mouth is and purchased a product. Half the time their unit is out of commision, sent off to the manufacturer to be updated. In addition, much like revisions of textbooks, "updating" lowers the value of older units. It's a delightful way for the manufacturer to continue to garner top dollar for new units by rendering older ones "obsolete". I used to think Audio Research was to be held in contempt, but they've been outdone by the folks at CAT.

I'll just say to the previous person posting that the Ultimate is not an upgrade product. That is, you cannot update any previous CAT preamp to the Ultimate. You have to go out and put down your $5950 to get one. So I guess that would qualify it to be considered a separate product from any of the previous CAT's, and that would make CAT no different from any of the manufacturers which Mr. Cardinal reveres, in the sense all they did is put out a new product. That said, I think there have been 5 or 6 CAT preamplifiers in the 15 or 16 years that CAT has been making them. With most of them, there was an upgrade path. I have heard several different models and they are all fine products in their own right and can hold their own with any of the top products today. I'll leave it to others to determine if those are too many upgrades in the last 16 years.

Best Preamp for hi-rez with line level only :Spectral DMC-30 for around $6500. Beats any Levinson with my electrostats. For phono listen to an Aesthetix phono preamp with volume
control, you will be impressed.