Audible Illusions M3B or L3

wow!, I have not heard about Audible Illusions since the late 90s!, I thought they were no more!, The last one I lived with was the 3A!, cheers.

@ Bigtee, Hi, In my exsperience, Audible Illusions have always been a very quiet and clear sounding pre-amp, black back grounds is their great suite!, Is the L-3 the top of the line now?, cheers.

I have been using the L-3 for about a year now and my opinion has not changed. I compared it to a couple of "Class A Stereophile" solid state preamps (Ayre K5xemp and Parasound JC2) and it came away as the hands down winner. It is just so open and presents so naturally.
I do believe the L-3 is AI's top of the line currently. It is within a couple of hundred dollars of the M3b and has been tweaked somewhat. No phono is included. It is optional. It does come with a remote that allows very fine adjustment of volume and the input level controls are stepped, precicion attenuators. So much better than in the past.
Just a superb, well built preamp that sounds as good as anything I have heard. It has performed flawlessly in the time I have had it and is dead quiet. Tubes seem to really last with this one.

Here is the BIG QUESTION:

AI Modulus are notorious for high gain making volume adjustments very hard to make - you can 'use up' the volume pot by 8:30. Now that it has stepped pots you get into the 'one click too loud, one too low' problem.

So what's the deal with the line stage? It has a remote control so that's got to be 'non stepped'. And since the L3 is designed for 'line level' inputs does it NOT HAVE THE CRAZY HIGH GAIN of the 3B?

Please, can anyone answer this question for me? How ARE the volume controls on the L3???????

I own an L3. It has a single-knob master volume potentiometer that is unstepped, motor driven and can be positioned with the remote. The L3 also has "right" and "left" separate stepped attenuators that are not controlled by the remote, but are "set and forget" controls for overall gain (or, more accurately, attenuation) and channel balance. The steps sound to me to be about 2dB apart. The master volume is a stereo 50k Alps pot of very high laser trimmed quality.

The raw gain of the unit is about 30dB, as in earlier units, but by using the stepped attenuators to set overall level and balance, control of volume with the master volume pot is very smooth and refined. I estimate my attenuation is set to about -15dB with the stepped attenuators and another 20dB with the master volume control. I am running a moving magnet cartridge (4mV output at 5cm/sec) into an ARC PH3 phono stage(54 dB gain) which is really hot. Still, with the L3, no problem. I have very fine control of volume.

This is an extremely refined preamplifier, and the problem with too much gain with the AI mod 3 and 3a units has been solved with this AI line stage arrangement