Rja,
I live in Austin,MN. Souyhern, MN.
Audioforever,
The midrange has texture and body paired with absolute lack of compression. No, no worries about lean sounding here. I keep coming back to the same thought - sounds like live music in your home. Unheard of depth and width of stage. Holographic music fills the room. Instruments and voices have life like focus, scale and weight. The articulation of each instrument is the best I have heard. Lots of space and air and yes a meaty midrange.
I am a midrange lover and cannot bear to listen to lean gear. Anything lean sounding is out the door in days. The Dude is the Man in this regard.
Bass is the deepest, most powerful and most articulate I have heard with any tubed preamp.
I hear no flaws. All the one word descriptions seem so unimportant as the Dude and the 225 amp go beyond these descriptions. It is all about the experience. Once the tonality, highs, detail, transparancy, mids, bass, staging and imaging are there it then becomes all about the experience. Is it a hifi system or is it much more of a live experience? The Dude and 225 amp deliver music folks.
The AH is a fine preamp, but in my system there was no comparision in any way. The Dude is so much more impressive and expressive of the music.
Bill