Spatial Audio Raven Preamp

Thanks for your comments Richard. It is likely you will still experience improvement in sound quality over time. From past experience the time to stabilize is different… between components… up to 1,000 hours. 

@rav6258   Thank you for your comments, I am saving to buy the Raven this coming spring and this verifies some of the traits I am looking for. 

@rav6258 Thanks for the feedback. Very encouraging. My Raven is being built now so hopefully I can add to the discussion in the near future.

One question, what was your previous preamp as a point of comparison?

Roni, my previous preamp was a Bottlehead Beepre 300.  It is a very airy sounding preamp with good soundstage and good clarity.  I just felt I could do better.  I  wanted a piece of equipment that had excellent reviews and wasn't too expensive, thus the reason for the purchase.  I also wanted this to be my last preamp and I believe tie is.

@rav6258 I looked at the Bottlehead kit and indeed it is a steal for what the price was.  I expect that it sounded very good.  They cut corners for the price point, but made some very clever choices.  Just looking at the kit photo I would expect the Raven to have more inner detail, and if the rest of your system is up to the task, a lot more inner detail and tonal correctness of instruments.  But you are paying 3-4X what the Bottlehead kit costs, so it better.....

The Bottlehead could be improved by a better volume control setup, the best coupling caps, etc...  You are still listening to caps though rather than the custom wound transformer in the Raven.  But you could still do a Bottlehead for $2200 or so if you built it yourself and I am sure it is a great preamp!