Looking For The Best Pre-Amp Match For A Pair of Classe Omega Amplifiers

Don’t have time to post pics for a bit, am at work. Speakers are JBL 4365 with a pair of Velodyne HGS12 servo subs. Sources are a SOTA Cosmos Eclipse with SME V and Transfiguration Proteus and Scheu Analog das Laufwerk No2 with Dynavector DV505 arms and Ortofon MC2000 and MC 3000 II cartridges. Digital is an Audio Magic Kukama DAC with Mac Mini server. Cabling is Wireworld Eclipse 8, power cords from Pi Audio. Room is 16 ’ by 19’ with 8’ ceilings.

Music types are all across the board. Folk, Jazz, pop, new age, classical, country, blues, electronic, just about anything except opera.

Sound preferences? As neutral as possible within my moderate budget. Prefer a bit of warmth and texture over clinical presentation if push comes to shove. But I no longer care for all the overt colorations you get from most tube gear, pretty much in the solid state world, especially with these speakers. 

Never been a fan of McIntosh myself either although I have had one friend system with MC60 and a Mac pre with Tannoy Westminster speakers sound nice. But still not my choice.

So Audionet can be on the short list, but it seems very few are on the used US market, at least at this time.

Be curious to know if any other candidates get mentioned.

There are a few interesting Ayre pre amps floating out there

To be honest a lot of these upper tier pre-amps have attributes I really don't care for. Why do they have to use programmable inputs? I don't care what set of jacks are assigned to what input button and the corresponding one on the remote. I just want a high quality pre amp with excellent volume control, balanced outputs, and remote control capability. I don't need a huge electronic display or bunches of other stuff....these newer pre-amps have LCD screens that just look like trouble to me. 

So i brought the Classe Omega home this afternoon and have them installed. Just running on my back up pre-amp at the moment, wanting to get the amps warmed up and settled in. Been powered up since 2 PM, so about 8 hours, and they have just gotten warm to the touch. In the past with my AVM amps and PS PS Audio I found it usually takes about 72 hours for them to find their footing, and at the 7 day mark before you get the majority of their ability. But even now, after listening to a few tracks you can hear the potential. The sound is far more real than many other amps I have heard over the years. If I had to describe the sound I would say it is nothing and everything, with the ability to bring the music alive. Sure at the upper tier I imagine there are amps that will outpace these, but for what financial resources I have this is quite satisfying. 

Now to find a pre-amp. I still prefer to use solid state, and Coda or Ayre makes a lot of sense. There are a couple of Burmester I could swing, EAR is going to be tube I suppose. Don't know what ARC is doing for SS anymore. The CJ gear phase inverts and don't want to deal with that. I supposed JDRG is an option. Luxman gets mentioned from time to time. Just a few thoughts....

The Omegas have started to settle in, been running now since Tuesday afternoon 24/7 and have finally gotten moderately warm and the sound has opened up. Beautiful midrange, actually excellent tonal balance across the board, spacious soundstage in all dimensions, excellent dynamic expression, and the bass is never overblown but reaches a level of depth that my other amps never would. This is the best sound I have achieved from my JBL 4365, and I am thoroughly content. This was a good purchase for me, and I have met if not exceeded my goals. 

Now its find a pre-amp. I did put a want to buy out for the Omega pre-amp but I bet that will take a long time to find. Need to find a stand in for the time being.