My brother owns the Audible Illusions. +1 regarding customer service. He sent his in for a service and they talked him into buying a replacement. Then they sold the one he’d sent in to somebody else and he had to wait a looooooong time before they sent him a new build replacement.
I own a supratek Cortese. In my opinion the Audible Illusions is not in the same league as the Supratek. It sounds like a solid state preamp. That’s just my opinion. For those who enjoy the AI, please don’t allow my comments to diminish your enjoyment of your preamp. They are universally very highly regarded and have been a recommended buy for decades. So they must be doing something right. It just seems to me that my Supratek digs more tone out the music. Instruments sound richer and fatter. More meat on the bone, so to speak. YMMV.
The AI sounded different than the SS unit it replaced (Professional Studio Equipment aka PSE Studio-1 out of the twin cites in the 80s). So I would not say it sounds like a SS preamp, unless you mean it was not overly tuby/tubby. So it has not been an obvious “that is a tube” piece of equipment.
Does a SS class-A device also sound like SS? It probably sounds different than a Class-B SS amp.
In a good pice of gear, whether it is tube or SS, it should basically be transparent. As they colour things more, I would not consider that as being good, in the same way that say cables that colour the sound do not seem like a beneficial thing to intentionally have.
That said, I am thinking of replacing it as it is 120v and they want a lot of coins to make it 240v. I have been running it behind a 230–>120v transformer, which maybe acts somewhat like a power conditioner as well as converting power??
The problem is, is that it is really pretty damned good… and to get better than it is doing takes a lot more coins to achieve.
