Spatial Audio Raven Preamp

@rav6258 I looked at the Bottlehead kit and indeed it is a steal for what the price was.  I expect that it sounded very good.  They cut corners for the price point, but made some very clever choices.  Just looking at the kit photo I would expect the Raven to have more inner detail, and if the rest of your system is up to the task, a lot more inner detail and tonal correctness of instruments.  But you are paying 3-4X what the Bottlehead kit costs, so it better.....

The Bottlehead could be improved by a better volume control setup, the best coupling caps, etc...  You are still listening to caps though rather than the custom wound transformer in the Raven.  But you could still do a Bottlehead for $2200 or so if you built it yourself and I am sure it is a great preamp!

For better or worse, the Raven and Blackbird have high parts costs. Instead of a 1/4" thick sculpted aluminum faceplate (marketing!), we put the money into custom parts that are in the audio path. Pro-quality connectors, high-purity wire, custom transformers, custom Khozmo volume controls, and advanced linear power supplies all add up. Each one is handmade and hand-wired by Spatial Audio Labs.

And the circuit itself, which doesn’t lend itself to a cost-reduced build. Instead of a lot of cheap parts (think opamps), there are a few pretty costly parts. If we had the same boutique styling and marketing expenses as other companies, the price would be double or triple what it is.

To follow up on what Lynn just posted.  I spent my time rebuilding vintage tube gear with modern parts, then I decided to make my own and always tried to make it reasonably affordable and be better than the vintage gear.  The Raven and Blackbirds are a departure.  What is possible if you remove the cost constraint, and instead build gear that will sound the best without regard to parts costs?  The Raven and Blackbirds are built with the best parts for sonics so they are expensive.  They are not built in insanely expensive cases, nor do they have a dealer network to add to costs, so they are not stratospherically expensive.  They are built with very nice panels and in solid cherry or other solid wooden cases.  They are expensive to build, and I understand that prices them out of many people's budget.  So something like the Bottlehead kit mentioned above is very cost effective, and I have no doubt it sounds wonderful.  My previous preamp and amps were very good to my ear and were cost effective.  But they do not occupy the same sonic universe as the Raven and Blackbirds.  Nor should they.  The parts cost for the Raven and Blackbirds exceed the sale price of the other gear.  

Obviously, the lower cost gear sounds very good and will provide the foundation for a very pleasing stereo system.  Diminishing returns is always at play.  But it is fun to make the best sounding gear you can, and then worry about the price.....

We take for granted the very low prices of modern solid-state electronics. For a little perspective, look at the price of a RCA 21" color TV or Fisher FM/AM receiver in 1964. The cheapest color set was $500, and the receiver was $350. Wow, what a deal! Fire up the DeLorean!

Well ... not really. Gold was $35/ounce back then. It trades for $2681/ounce as of tonight. You could get a decent house for $12,000 back then, and a really nice car for $3000. So that color TV with a 21" screen really cost about $5000 ... for the entry-level model. The floor model with a nice wood cabinet cost $8000. Or you could buy a 19" monochrome TV on a metal cart, with very poor picture quality, for $1800. That Fisher cost $3500, with the optional wood cabinet another $300. And no discounts either ... Fair Trade prices were enforced by the FDR-era Fair Trade Commission, not the free-for-all we have now.

Quality tube electronics cost about the same now as then, which is no surprise because they are made the same way, with lots of hand labor by skilled assembly people. Cars likewise are complex and require lots of labor as well as capital investment, despite operating in a hyper-competitive world market.

If what you want can be made with integrated circuits put on a circuit board with a pick-n-place machine, and the labor is minimal, you can have it at a price less than a tenth of what it cost back in the Golden Age. And I would take my 65" Sony 4K Q-OLED display over any 21" RCA television with a resolution lower than 330,000 dot triads. That’s a super deal by any standard.

The value kings today are Class D amps with built-in streamers. Plug and play, the same as that 1964 Fisher receiver. Anything else is a luxury ... it’s up to you to find your happy medium.

Personally, I find the tonality and subjective realism of transformer-coupled vacuum tubes to be unmatched by other technologies, but that’s just me. I got on that train back in the late Nineties with the Amity amplifier, and have been on it ever since.

@donsachs mentions the Bottlehead kit as an option for DIY enthusiasts. I would like to note for those of you whose budget won't allow for the purchase of a Raven, and are willing to take on a DIY project, you can purchase an Audio Note Kits (ANK) L3 transformer coupled preamplifier kit for about $2,500. This will introduce you to the benefits of a transformer coupled output as @lynn_olson references above. These kits use very nice parts and are relatively straight forward to build. I myself built the L5 Mentor, and when you look at the price of that kit, it's right up there with the Raven which is sold as a completed build. Which goes to show the cost of the Raven is not unreasonable for what you are getting. In fact, I would have expected a preamplifier of the Raven's level of quality to cost more. So cost wise if I had to do it all over again the Raven would be a serious contender for me.

Personally, I find the tonality and subjective realism of transformer-coupled vacuum tubes to be unmatched by other technologies, but that’s just me.

While I like my L5 Mentor and enjoyed building it. I now use direct coupled preamplifiers and amplifiers. No capacitors or transformers at the output. Which is where I would stray from the comment from @lynn_olson as well designed direct coupled components in my experience take the tonality and realism up another level.