Best Of Breed or Matching Components?

With preamps and power amps, keeping with the same creator/manufacturer is often very advantageous because they were designed to compliment one another. A few such pairings that show obvious benefits would be with Atma-Sphere or Lamm.

With the former, there are advantages that go beyond sonic matching and in this case, one can separate an Atma-Sphere preamp (and entire front end (source gear) from their power amplifiers by up to 50 feet with a common (cheap) Mogami XLR IC with absolutely no sonic detriment.

This is not to say that there are are not some very magical matches of different components. 

Happy Listening!

It all depends! Some manufacturers make an outstanding preamp while another makes an outstanding amp. I have mixed different brands for years,especially when I needed a big solid state power amp and a tube preamp. Also there are some manufacturers that do not make both! Always try to get the best of both worlds!

My last preamp and amp combo were a McCormack RLD 1 and DNA 125 amp.   The preamp  was nice, but changing it out for a conrad - johnson Classic 2 SE was a huge improvement.   The DNA 125 has since been replaced by a pair of Quicksilver Mid Mono amps and they sound great together.   

There is no absolute answer. Some will favor the same manufacturer, while others will favor different manufacturers, and both sides are correct.

Recently I have swung over to the same manufacturer side of the fence, but even further, by using an integrated amplifier. There are so many very good integrated amps out there these days, from major players like Pass Labs, Solution, VAC, D'Agostino, Vitus, etc., that for some, separates can seem a thing of the past.

Many times simpler is better. Of course, as with anything else in this hobby, YMMV