What preamp creates the largest soundstage?


I have always loved a large soundstage.  I have a small listening room (10x10) and have mini-monitors, driven by a tube amp.  I have played a lot with speaker placement, room acoustics, listening position to create a large soundstage.  I have rolled tubes on the amp and made dramatic improvements. (I have purposely left details on the brands of tubes, amp and speakers out, because I don’t want side comments to distract from my question)

i have a digital source into a solid state naim preamp.  I home demo’ed a well reviewed preamp, and was surprised at how much the soundstage shrunk, both side to side and top downward.  It was deeper, and did have much of the tube magic, but I could not live without the big soundstage.  

so my question is, does anyone have experience with a preamp that produces a big soundstage?  I am looking for recommendations on what to demo next. While I lean toward tubes, I am open to solid state.  I am okay either new or used, and could spend in the 5k range, but would be happy to spend less.  Also comments on specific brands (i.e. xyz is known to have great soundstage in all their preamps) as opposed to models, are welcome.

and I will be the first to admit that perhaps the very large soundstage is not “accurate”to real music, but boy is it seductive and I love it and can’t live without it.

meiatflask

Showing 1 response by oddiofyl

I have a c-j Classic 2SE and love it too... I have found that with all my sources, DAC , and Vault 2i having remote volume the lack of remote on the Classic is not really such a big deal... this pre checked all the boxes for me. Simple, just volume , source , and power switch. Sounds phenominal, I auditioned mine in a $50k plus system and it was right at home with much more expensive gear downstream.

A few days after I got it I contacted C-J on a Friday night , Saturday morning I got an email from Dr Lew Johnson thanking me for choosing c-j and he went on to say in his opinion the Classic 2SE was one of the biggest bang for the buck products they’ve made. He gushed like a proud Papa. They are a good value on the used market .