The best preamp without a doubt..in my experience


I have always had a thing for preamplifiers. I tried many of the best brands—just to name a few: Shindo (several), Spectral, Klyne Arts, deHavilland, Berning, Placette, Marantz. I thought I had gotten close to the top as far as preamplification goes...until I got lucky enough to find an EAR G88, which is what deParavicini himself defines his masterpiece. Well, I am dumbfounded. The music flows more naturally, more realistically than ever before. You feel like being in closer touch with the instruments or the voices. The sound is just real, and for the first time I felt like I heard a real bass in my system. It’s an old product. It was produced in the early nineties, and only in 25 exemplars. But if you’re lucky enough to find one...don’t let it go.
ggavetti
The best preamp is that one that when you put in in your system and hear it, makes you realize there is a level you never dreamed about. You will never go back and you will sell your house for it. It will not be the perfect switching device of all time with all types of connectors and inputs, etc - it will just make you hear that thing that you have bee chasing forever (one big hoop). 3-d sound that you can walk around the instruents; stick your hand in and turn a page for the pianist. rub ellas tummy.
Cerrot, I think you capture quite well what I feel when I listen to the G88. BTW, I agree that system matching is important, but I don't think it's fair to say that "everything is relative". There are different leagues of preamplifiers. A Conrad Johnson ART will always sound better than a more than respectable deHavilland, in most if not all systems. I guess what I wanted to convey was that moving to the G88 from preamplifiers that most people would put in a pretty top league (Shindo, Spectral, the old Klyne Arts) felt like moving to a new level altogether.
Ggavetti, I agree with you. The preamp is definitely the conductor of the orchestra.
Indeed Cerrot. I discovered this with the Pass Labs XP-20.

I wonder by what margin the XP-30 can excel...