Just because a pre is expensive and even highly regarded obviously doesn’t make it automatically better for you. Perhaps you just chose a very good pre with the wrong sound-characteristic profile for your system and tastes. Maybe do some more research on other top preamps that may better provide what you’re looking for and give it another go. Sure would help make this more useful, informative, and interesting if you’d just share the equipment in your system, and you may even get some helpful suggestions to ponder rather than just going it alone especially if you also share what improvements you’d like to achieve with an “end game” pre. It’s kinda the whole point of the Forum here.
Your experiences with system synergy
Hi All -
Over the weekend, I had the opportunity to demo a top of the line tube amp in my system. This is a summit piece that many audiophiles would consider and end game piece. I was ready to open my wallet and spend a big chunk of money to upgrade my system.
Upon arrival at my home, I set this tube amp and sat back to experience the magic. To my surprise, the amp sounded good, but it did not best my far less expensive current tube amp. I played with speaker placement and demoed lots of different styles of music to find the magic.
Eventually, I plugged my own amp in, the one I was expecting to replace, and there was an immediate sense of rightness. It was if I’d introduced a new dancing partner to my current system and they just could not match rhythms on the dance floor. Now, to be clear, my current system has great components. I don’t think there is a weak link in the system. Thus, I thought the end game amp would be revelatory and transformational, but it wasn’t.
It made me realize the profound importance of system synergy.
I’m wondering if others have had this moment or epiphany when introducing a vaunted and desirable component into their system just be sort of utterly disappointed?