Trance,
As I mentioned above, I own a Ref. No. 32, though I don't think it delivers "ultimate" performance. It is, quite decent sounding, and my observation of its sonic merits come from listening to it in a system that does not have other Levinson components. As a general observation, manufacturers design their products to work well together, so a Reference No. 32 in a system with Levinson amplifiers will probably work better than the Levinson works in my system.
I have had the opportunity to try different combinations of gear. One of the things I've noticed is that the combination of a tube linestage with solid state amplifiers tends to be the most unpredictable of combinations. I know there are a lot of people who think that one can get the best of both worlds this way, but, often I find otherwise. It is just hard to predict the final outcome. Yes, I've heard such combinations work well (e.g., Veloce linestage into the incredibly expensive Soulution amps), I am just saying the result is unpredictable.
As Raquel mentioned above, there are also practical issues with mixing the two. I don't like to keep tube gear on all the time. On the other hand, I think solid state amps take forever to warm up and are best left on all the time. Unless you can effectively mute either the amp or linestage, you would have an issue with turn-on/turn-off noise if you were to turn off the linestage while keeping the amp fired up.
As I mentioned above, I own a Ref. No. 32, though I don't think it delivers "ultimate" performance. It is, quite decent sounding, and my observation of its sonic merits come from listening to it in a system that does not have other Levinson components. As a general observation, manufacturers design their products to work well together, so a Reference No. 32 in a system with Levinson amplifiers will probably work better than the Levinson works in my system.
I have had the opportunity to try different combinations of gear. One of the things I've noticed is that the combination of a tube linestage with solid state amplifiers tends to be the most unpredictable of combinations. I know there are a lot of people who think that one can get the best of both worlds this way, but, often I find otherwise. It is just hard to predict the final outcome. Yes, I've heard such combinations work well (e.g., Veloce linestage into the incredibly expensive Soulution amps), I am just saying the result is unpredictable.
As Raquel mentioned above, there are also practical issues with mixing the two. I don't like to keep tube gear on all the time. On the other hand, I think solid state amps take forever to warm up and are best left on all the time. Unless you can effectively mute either the amp or linestage, you would have an issue with turn-on/turn-off noise if you were to turn off the linestage while keeping the amp fired up.