I've been comparing my Accuphase A-48 to a Luxman M700 on my Harbeth P3ESRs near field. Also compared to my Hegel H590 and a pair of Topping la90d's with the Topping pre90. Mcintosh C2700 is my preamp.
When I put the Accuphase in there.. holy crap! it doubled the size of the speakers and pulled out more bass than those 4inch drivers should be able to produce. They were playing at a new level. The Accuphase leveled up the tonality, making the already sweet Harbeths even more delicious.
Fyi, the topping pre and la90 monos sounded damn close to the Hegel H590.
The Luxman was actually really good too. But just didn't have the tonality of the Accuphase. But it makes me wonder about the M900 or the m10x.
Switching from the hegel to the accupase/c700 on Kef r500's created a whole different sound stage. A/B-ing, the sound stage would go from a sort of wide and triangluar deep stage to a really wide, more airy and stretched out stage, still with depth, but more realistic depth. voices that seemed distant "into" the triangle came forward
Dying to get my hands on an Accuphase preamp like the c2900