05-27-09: Mdrummer01Actually, I haven't heard the Parasound 2100, though I think there's a store in my town where I could give it a listen.
Johnnyb53: The NuForces are well broken in and are left on all the time. I'll look into the Parasound...it looks VERY affordable. Have you heard it before? Any particular characteristic of this pre jump out at you?
I was going by a recommendation from a long-time sales rep at Audio Advisor. When I was asking him about line stages about a year ago, he highly recommended this one--even over some tube-based alternatives around the same (or somewhat higher ) price. This particular sales rep is about my age with close to 40 years as an audio enthusiast, and we have similar tastes. We even both used the same obscure preamp for quite awhile--a VSP Straightwire II that was an all-out assault on the high end in its day, and set a very high bar in speed, neutrality, and fully fleshed-out musicality. I figure if he was used to the VSP and better, the Classic 2100 must be very competitive at its price, especially since the VSP phono stage is not an easy act to follow. IIRC he was pretty confident that this wasn't just the transferred phono stage from the ZPhono; he said it sounds a lot better.
And with AA's 30-day return policy, it's a pretty low-risk proposition to check it out in your own home.