I own this preamp. At the moment, I sent four E-mails to Emotiva because the preamps balanced inputs seem to bypass the tape monitor loop/processor loop and I can find nothing in Emotivas on-line quick owners manual that addresses this, and Emotiva has not responded to any of my E-mails. Emotiva keeps refering to a full version owners manual on their site which does not exist. As far as the sound goes, if you are used to tube preamps, you will quickly notice that this is an solid state preamp. Somewhat grainy, bright, and flat sounding. Its bass does not match that of my YS Audio A2SE preamp. In fact, it sounds rather thin compared to my YS Audio preamp and what I remembered from the sound quality of the tubes4hifi SP14 preamp I owned not too long ago. I like the features of the Emotiva preamp, but all that for just $899.00, and high sound quality too????? No, not happening. At least not in this case. I have never seen a company that has been more of a mess than Emotiva. They keep changing the dates of availability of some of their gear. They sell there customers products which were not ready to be released. It seems as if they are using there customers as beta testers.