Unless you are dealing with analog input such as a tape or vinyl the best preamp is no preamp. Keeping the signal digital and in the digital domain into a digital power amp where it is converted to analog for your speakers will produce the best possible sound.
All of this ignores the elephant in the room where thousands or even tens of thousands of dollars are spent on equipment while ignoring the biggest factor and that is the quality of the recording. The producer/engineer at the sound board (when recording in studio) can destroy the result by mike placement, quality of mikes, how the signals are mixed and amplitude and tone controls of each channel mixed. Very few engineers go for the simple but acoustically more accurate binaural recording. They can't resist panning or boosting what they like and burying what they don't like. Add to that problem the fact that most are listening to monitors that tend to be bass heavy or light and that influences what they hear and how they adjust the recording and you get a lot of crap and then audiophiles interpret what they are hearing without knowing how it was recorded.
I was friends with the owner of a high end usia store in Miami when I lived there in the 80s and he used to also be a recording engineer. The work he would undertake to properly record a symphony orchestra (The New. World Symphony) to recreate the environment and the sense of having the best seat in the house was astounding. Mikes were suspended on wires just above the best seats in the place and care was taken to preserve the sense of space and location of instruments with their natural timbre intact and to capture as wide a dynamic range as possible. The difference between those recordings and ones where mikes are placed throughout the orchestra and mixed was night an day.
You may have noticed in listening to many modern recordings, especially noticeable in recording of symphonies where you know the instruments locations, I find it very annoying that during part of the recording the violins are on the left (usual location) and other parts, especially if it is a video recording, as the camera pans and moves the location of the instruments move. For me it destroys the illusion of capturing a live performance.
My son was a recording artist and I have gone into studio to observe recording sessions and seen first hand how the engineer can dramatically alter the recording as they think it is their job to put their artistic signature on the recording rather than capturing the best possible rendition of what is being played.
All of this ignores the elephant in the room where thousands or even tens of thousands of dollars are spent on equipment while ignoring the biggest factor and that is the quality of the recording. The producer/engineer at the sound board (when recording in studio) can destroy the result by mike placement, quality of mikes, how the signals are mixed and amplitude and tone controls of each channel mixed. Very few engineers go for the simple but acoustically more accurate binaural recording. They can't resist panning or boosting what they like and burying what they don't like. Add to that problem the fact that most are listening to monitors that tend to be bass heavy or light and that influences what they hear and how they adjust the recording and you get a lot of crap and then audiophiles interpret what they are hearing without knowing how it was recorded.
I was friends with the owner of a high end usia store in Miami when I lived there in the 80s and he used to also be a recording engineer. The work he would undertake to properly record a symphony orchestra (The New. World Symphony) to recreate the environment and the sense of having the best seat in the house was astounding. Mikes were suspended on wires just above the best seats in the place and care was taken to preserve the sense of space and location of instruments with their natural timbre intact and to capture as wide a dynamic range as possible. The difference between those recordings and ones where mikes are placed throughout the orchestra and mixed was night an day.
You may have noticed in listening to many modern recordings, especially noticeable in recording of symphonies where you know the instruments locations, I find it very annoying that during part of the recording the violins are on the left (usual location) and other parts, especially if it is a video recording, as the camera pans and moves the location of the instruments move. For me it destroys the illusion of capturing a live performance.
My son was a recording artist and I have gone into studio to observe recording sessions and seen first hand how the engineer can dramatically alter the recording as they think it is their job to put their artistic signature on the recording rather than capturing the best possible rendition of what is being played.