Pre Amp or Amp Best Money Spent

12-03-07: Bob_reynolds
It seems to me that your budget for electronics is way too high for your Vandy speakers. A simple NAD integrated, like the C370, will get all they have to deliver. Spending more on electronics won't get you anything, IMO. If you want to spend more money, then add a subwoofer.

Any speaker, including a model from Radio Shack, will sound better with better electronics driving them. So I couldn't disagree more with Bob's assertion that the NAD integrated "will get all they have to deliver".

That said, Bob does have a point in questioning the budget allocation toward each part of your system. Spending bigger dollars on a Rogue amp and preamp raises the question of whether that money would have been better spent on the superior 2Ce Sig or vastly superior 2Ce Sig mkII.

Also, the quality level of both the preamplifier and power matter and should be optimized for the best overall results, but assuming that a choice had to be made on which is more sonically significant, it would be the preamp. This assumes that an asinine choice isn't made for either component.

I'm a Vandersteen and Rogue dealer.

As mentioned in my previous post, I think you may be spending money disproportionately. The pre-Signature Vandersteen speakers are quite dated sounding compared with the newer versions. The Signatures and MkII's are much more open, alive in the highs, and transparent by comparison. I think you are going to always be limited by the older speakers to some extent.

That said, the Rogue amps sound nice with Vandersteen speakers. I can't comment on the others because I have no direct listening experience with those combinations.