David Berning preamp..looking for suggestions

The MicroZOTL2 is actually made by Linear Tube Audio. Urban Hifi is our retail store, which has a soon-to-be opening location in Takoma Park, just across the Maryland line in the DC metro area. They are separate companies, though, and Linear Tube Audio sells its products through dealers, and Urban Hifi carries more than just LTA stuff. Several reviews of the MicroZOTL2 as a preamp are linked on our website, lineartubeaudio.com

I don't mean to be advertising, just clarifying. Knowing quite well what goes into a David Berning product versus a Linear Tube Audio product, I think the Berning preamp will be step above the MicroZOTL2, though I have only heard the MicroZOTL2.  

I am using the Micro ZOTL as a preamp as of yesterday and I am very impressed. If your looking for any type of tube coloration you might as well look elsewhere. It is the most transparent pre I've ever heard. Still breaking in so more to come.

I recently borrowed and tried one of David Berning's ZOTL-One preamps with a phono stage and compared it to the phono preamp I have now, a two box unit built by DIY guru Charlie Phelps that he and mutual friends believe is better than any commercially available phono preamp. To my surprise, the ZOTL-ONE was better still - more extended in the treble, tighter bass, higher transparency. I like it so much that I'm in the process of buying one.  But a caution: If you like the "warm" sound of many tube preamps to balance off the detail of a solid state amp, this preamp won't do that.  The ZOTL-One sound is very detailed, but without any unpleasant edginess. More than any audio component I've heard, its sound is simply "natural/ live." If that's what your after, the ZOTL-One is the best I've encountered.

Pani, I am surprised you felt compelled to go to solid state amplification to drive your Tannoys; I usually think of Tannoy speakers as being high impedance and high efficiency, thus well suited to even flea power SETs.  In fact, one of your responses comes from someone using an 845 amplifier to drive the same speakers.  Can you explain the reasoning?  This is not to say that there are not a few really nice sounding low-power SS amplifiers that one might consider for this job, such as the Nelson Pass "First Watt" amplifier family.

The subsequent discussion makes me want to know more about the Berning preamplifiers.

My only problem with Berning design is the use of SMPS (switch mode power supplies). From all the gears I have heard till this day which has SMPS, none of them could manage to sound without some "digital" hash/artifacts. Not a single one. My only logic to this is, after all the signal is just shape of the wave, the actual thing that takes this shape is the power and is delivered to the signal. If the power itself has any noise/hash (in a SMPS the noise/distortion would be similar to that of digital domain) then no matter how good is the amplification circuit one ultimately hears those "digital distortions". And no PSU is undistorted.

Lewm,
Tannoys are efficient speakers but they are not typical "high efficiency" speakers like the Altec, Avant Garde or the likes. Tannoys specifies their efficiency rating based on the HF driver. The LF driver is actually 4-5 db less efficient. The LF driver of the Tannoys can go low in the bass and needs to be gripped, which is why there are views that a amp with a bit of negative feedback works well for the Tannoys. All said, I have finally zeroed upon a Audio Note PSE 300B with 18 watts as my amp. It does 90% of the things better than I wanted. Only the very low bass seems to be rounded off which is okay for me.