If your front end componets have beefy output stages, the amp has a high input impedance and you are using the preamp as an attenuator anyway (more on this later), try a Reference Line Preeminance II passive preamp. It will offer up a stunning amount of detail and dynamics (yes, dynamics from a passive preamp). It will NOT sound tube like but it will also NOT sound like solid state. Just VERY open, relaxed and detailed. They go for about $700-800 on the net. Otherwise, I too recommend the Rouges as the only active pre-amps I can stand. However, there is another possibility, kinda od but it works. The Music Fidelity X-Can Version 2 (Stop laughing!). Out of grins, I tried mine as a preamp by going to Radio Shack and getting a couple of adapters and pulling the signal out of the headphone jack. Wow was I impressed! Cheap, cheap and did I say CHEAP. Open, dynamic, with that palpability that the Rogues have....and only $250! Strange looking and only one input but it's definately high end. To see if you're a candidate for a passive preamp, just hook your CD player directly into the amp. Cue up a disk that starts out soft and builds in volume. If you find that you need to turn down the volume to get to your desired listening level, then you are using the preamp as an attenuator and all that active gain stuff is just in the way, causing distortion. That's why a lot of manufactures are going to preamp designs that are passive up to unity gain, and then bring in the active stuff after that. You do have a lot of GOOD choices out there for under a kilo buck....we all should have such problems. Good luck.
