How important is the amp?

He insisted that it was the preamp & that I would surprised it was the preamp hence his design effort to minimize the distortion from it.

Well if we are going to talk about distortion and coloration, preamps make very little of it, often a 1/10th or 1/100th of that of the amp, which in turn often pales compared to that of the speaker.

Here is a wonderful set of comments condensed into an pdf by one of the world's leading designers- its well worth the read:

http://jockohomo.net/data/johncurl-v.0.1.pdf

^Interesting link. Thanks.

The room used and its acoustic properties is perhaps the single biggest part of a home system and the one you have least control over to change as needed. So after that, you have to have speakers that can perform well as needed in the room. Then you need an amp up to the task of driving the speakers to their potential. Now you have a solid foundation for good sound you can tweak as needed. After that, you are in a position to focus on teh quality of the source devices used, but these days, with modern digital in particular, getting good results there is less problematic and much harder to go wrong altogether. Of course, teh quality of source material played can vary widely as well, even if all the rest is done to perfection. You have little control over recordings as well other than to try various releases and remasters if needed.

Simple: If your amp mates well with your speakers, than you can possibly change it when you change speakers to find better match.

I borrowed a Octave V110 with super black box. Hopefully tomorrow I'll have some time to install and listen.