New Preamp from Musetec

The Preamp is in production and will be ready to ship in about 2 weeks.  The price is $4500 including shipping.  There will be a factory discount for early purchasers.

A detailed owners manual is here.  It did take a short while to download.  In the manual is a description of the metal remote control.

I have been a very satisfied user of this company's DACs through two generations and am the OP of a long thread over at digital.  I can answer questions about the company and the designer and the general quality of his work.  But I am not, myself, in the market for a preamp.  What I can say is that the designer is a music lover who judges each component, small and large, in his designs by listening carefully.  He seems to wind up using European components far more expensive than in competing designs at the price.

@yyzsantabarbara 

Hi there friend.

Given his pricing, and I have to emphasize HIS pricing because we know where he has been in pricing, he must be aiming a good deal higher than the preamps you name.

We'll not know 'till someone takes the plunge.  It would be great if his dealer in Indiana can get a loaner to send out.

@yyzsantabarbara 

I don't agree with your assessment if it is meant to say that the Benchmark (which I was familiar with) has no sound.  A straight wire with gain?  No coloration?  I don't think so.  It may be simply a matter of which components let the true music through.

I don't mean to dispute anything here.  Best we wait 'till someone tries the new preamp.

@yyzsantabarbara 

Then it's hard to imagine two people more at the opposite ends of audio than you and me.  If you want a preamp that does not at all change the amp sound, and you seem not to need the gain, then why not just opt for a passive preamp?

It's not what a preamp adds, it's what it lets the amp reveal.  The purpose of a better preamp, at least as I see it, is to make the amp sound better that it would with another preamp ahead of it.  By better I mean to make what comes out of the amp sound more like live, unamplified, music.  A fine piano or violin played well should sound warm and smooth.  Same for a good voice.  Of course some musicians can make ugly sounds and a good system should reveal that too.  A better preamp, to me, is one that lets what's on the media come through the amp sounding more like the live event at the original taping.  A preamp's function, beyond switching, volume and remote, is not all that well understood.

I don't know anything about the Holo, but I have experienced Benchmark products over the years, including DAC and preamp.  They have a house sound, and have always had a house sound, and to me that sound is just clean, dull and electric.  No wonder, with their switchmode power supplies, chip op amps and heavy feedback.  They always measure very well and I know lots of critics and lots of people say they love them.  Not me.  

Just one opinion here, no more valuable than your own.