Help me find a pre-amp

BTW, I’ve kind of dismissed Cary bc -rightly or wrongly, I assume a lot of my $$ would be going into phono stage related build. I’ll never see ROI from that.

Yup Conrad Johnson 

A lot of good suggestions.

In my experience the Backert sounded like AI - very dynamic, but artificial sounding.  A sax should sound like a sax and the difference between a piano, harp and harpsichord is easily confused with the pre.

I passed on the Pre in favor of the Aesthetics Calypso...which gets the timbre and dynamics right...as did the Atma Pre - just not as deep a stage.

Another recommendation for Backert Labs.  I recently purchased the Rhumba Extreme and a sax sounds very much like a sax on my system.  It's also very responsive to tube rolling.

Rkfaberdds,

I just finished my preamp listening journey, and I'll try to get my notes out later today......I'm not great at putting that into words, but I'll give it a go. Was a fun experience....and I've ordered my preamp.