Sonic Frontiers to Conrad Johnson .

Brainwater, no I'm not kidding!
And it's not a joke that SF Line 3 is clearer,faster,with better focus,more information,with more qiet signal and more revealing sound than CJ Premier preamp which is dark, mellow,with no neutrality.I'm sorry about that...
The warmer sound IMHO is not the point.
When you hear music from Line 3 the orchestra is excactly right there.When you hear from CJ, the orchestra is somewhere there...!!!
That's the point for me.

Athens , i really thought you were in fact kidding. Sorry. Its hard to tell in writing sometimes. Didnt mean to offend. I do agree with newbee in that the CJ gear i have had in my system was not warn and colored by any means . Those days have come and gone i believe and the musicality of top end CJ gear is second to none yet articulation of the musical notes is clean and accurate. I think the chain is a determining factor of course but i find quite frankly their new products inspiring. I had access to the Sonic Frontiers line stage a couple of months ago and it was as you said , clean and fast but did not remotely posess the soundstaging properties , decay nor musicality the CJ had in spades. Its just my singular experience and is to be taken as such.

It couldn't hurt trying to listen to some different speakers (?) I'm only suggesting this because usually people that love the big, warm, lush, sound have something like old Tannoy 15 inchers or similar crazy stuff.

Regarding the SF Line 1: I have a buddy who has a Line 1 in front of a Canary power amp and Audio Note speakers. Believe me he has incredible, musical, big and warm sound - but his sound isn't out of control warm. It still rocks extremely convincingly.

A Line 1 or Power 2 shouldn't prevent you from having big and warm if your speakers and source are right. Example, if you're going to use a Benchmark DAC you'd probably have issues getting big, warm, lush, to hell with accuracy sound. It wasn't designed for that.

Both of us + other of our buddies have heard different B&W Nautilus models hooked up in various tube-based systems and they have never sounded big and warm. Clean would describe them best (and hard on top too, at least to our ears).

Not trying to insult your speakers, but if they weren't designed to do big, warm, and lush, then any system that they're in will have issues doing big, warm and lush.

I am using Line 1 with Power 2 driving ProAc Response 1SC with Cardas Golden Cross speaker cable.

I did a blind test on my friends by covering the equipments and asked them to comment on the sound. And all have the same answer "Warm sound! Typical tube sound"

So I think it is unfair to say Sonic Frontiers gears sound cold. Speaker played an important part and also speaker cable.

I have the exact same system. The Power 2/Line 1 and the ProAc 1SC's (birdseye maple). I've heard them pull a dissapearing act, but I had the same problem with them as I do w/ my big B&W's- thin sound-no warmth. I'm using 1M Straightwire Encore(red) from my CD to the Pre and 4M Rhapsody(blue) from Pre to Amp. Speaker is Serenade. The Amp is on its own stand spiked to the floor and the Pre and CD are on a Target stand spiked to the floor. I've had the system in 3 different rooms in 2 different houses. Same result. Tried placing equiptment on different supports w/ a combination of cones. I suspect that the cables are not helping and I have'nt experimented enought with them. But like 'newbee' said (above); 'tonally cold'. I hope the Conrad Johnson 16LSII that I just bought helps. I get it next week and I'll let you know the differences.