Pre Amp comparisons

Your musical taste won't have anything to do with this. Amps and preamps have to be faithful to the signal, not the genre :)  What makes it good for one genre will make it good for another.

Do you want a balanced preamp or single-ended?

You really owe it to yourself to audition an Audio Research Reference preamp or the LS28 SE that Steve Guttenberg reviewed. An ARC preamp will work with any amp and will give you the best combination of resolution, dynamics and textural detail. 

Will check out the AVM
Can do both but mostly prefer bal
ARC is on the list to look at as well.

I love the XP30 its not going anywhere! I just enjoy swapping gear in and out of my main system. I have been living with the XP30 and X1 for a long time. I have not been paying attention to the latest preamp offerings. I love the Pass XP30, Levinson 33h running this through Dynaudio Consequence UE is stunning in everyway! Just looking for a new linstage, something different other than the Pass.

I am defiantly going to take Benchmark up on their offering of an in house trial for 30 days. I absolutely love their business model. Unlike Levinson, great products with zero customer service. That company had a huge dedicated customer base and killed it. Mind blowing to me how they have run some d bags of these big corporations run the company into the ground. Hard working passionate engineers come up with amazing products and d bags killed the company off with zero customer support and vision after you spend almost 100k on their products! kudos Harmon International!!