What Solid State PreAmp?

Mike, why don't you try the McIntosh? I've often read they have good synergy with McIntosh amps. I have a 402 as well and I'm searching for c2300 so I'm biased that way. Love the amp and figure the pre-amp should go the same way. Right now I'm running DAC to AMP through some Cardas GR ICs.

The c46 8-band eq highest control is centered on 4kHz. So if you need to roll off 10~20kHz highs, it isn't going to work well for that. Download the manual to see the eq curves. The c46 eq is more for fixing specific bumps in rooom acoustics.

Most of your room EQ is below 300Hz. 4kHz is actually quite high and useful for attenuating the hard edge of poor CDs or system shortcomings.[...]

For many CDs, program equalization is needed. The 4Khz band on the c46 can be turned down all day long and the harsh highs remain on a rceording. For example some some well thought of Steely Dan CDs are that way.

The local dealer has all the highest-send Mc sources, cables, power conditioners, etc. A good recording sounds great. OTOH ones with compression and boosted highs aren't fixed by playing around with the 4Khz -band equalizer on the c-46. Of course it's personal preference.

Others want a boomin' bass and searing highs. Coming from pre-digital audio of the 60s, 70s and early 80s, many of today's recordings are most unpleasant sounding to these 47 y.o. ears. Maybe that's why Mc makes for example the c45 and c2300 with standard treble controls (that roll off from the top). YMMV.

My MC402 fixed 90% of the issues I had with many recordings. I'd like to go ahead and get a preamp for the tone control and for voltage matching purposes.

Maybe Atmaspere's tube amps do even better with the highs as he claimed. I would like to audition one but no dealers around the state. And still the price is on up there.

As far as purity, accuracy, shortest signal path, I gave up on making that the endgame. Spent way too much time and $$$ on that. I simply want something that sounds good.