I cannot comment on your phono preamp as I have not heard it. But the notion of a good phono pre brings up a good point.
The phono stage in my Creek Evo 100A is decent, but when I bought a Manley Chinook phono stage it changed everything for the better. In fact, I got the same advice from folks on these forums when I was looking to spot my weakest link. I’d have to go back to the thread that I started to see for sure, but I remember one guy passionately recommended upgrading from the Creek’s phono and keeping the Creek. I didn’t listen to that advice and started with the Primaluna upgrade and put the Creek on the bench.
What happened? Well I loved the Primaluna. But later when I did upgrade the phono to the Chinook I found, and can clearly say, that the Chinook made the biggest improvement. I can still enjoy the Primaluna OR the Creek with my Imagine T2s, but in either case it’s the Chinook that’s the true MVP. I would never have thought that because--to me, before--a phono stage was not a very sexy purchase. Amps and speakers was where it was at.
Now, to make matters more confusing...
The built in phono stage on the Nova300 is very good. It is actually better than the Creek.
The Nova300 is very good, and for folks who don’t want separates and want to use a one box solution it is very talented and super reasonably priced. So I want to be careful about saying one thing is clearly better than the other for all purposes.
Back to sonic signature...
The Creek does everything well and nothing poorly. It is well behaved and not harsh. It’s crisp and defined with really strong but fit (not bloated) bass. I can tell you that I was thinking of going McIntosh after the Creek. While I never tried Mac gear with the T2s, I did try it with Sonus Faber Olympicas and B&Ws--not apples to apples. Nonetheless, after hearing a $20K+ system, I thought the Creek and T2s were better to my ears in my room. The Creek Ruby DAC board (not cheap, $600) is really, really good. It holds its own with my NAD M51 DAC--a Stereophile A+ product. The NAD has more finesse and detail, but the Creek doesn’t misbehave and has superb creamy big sound.
The Nova300 is a bit hard to nail down. I don’t hear any grain in the high treble as Stereophile did in its review. [They played it through vintage horn speakers]. The Nova300 did seem to take a long time to break in. Sonically, I feel that it’s trying hard to present a cohesive sound smoothly. It’s very good and has gobs of power. Funny though that the 300w per channel into 4 ohms does not have more control over the T2s than the Creek at 170w at 4 ohms.
The Nova300 is a very, very nice amp at the price. It seems to cast a cohesive picture of the music in a concerted smooth way--at the cost of resolution shy of the Creek. The top, middle and bottom end are sort of blended together and, while this sounds seamless to me, I just like the character of the Creek more. Yet the Nova300 is a damn fine amp. I really, really need to hook the Nova300 up to my KEF LS50s to try that on for size. The reason is now obvious to me: synergy is important. The Creek and KEF LS50s sound great together, but I wonder of the Nova300 would be a better fit with the KEFs.
So after all this, we can tell I'm not the best reviewer in terms of describing stuff. Sometimes it just comes down to, "I like this one better." The best I can do on sonic signature of Creek EVO 100 v. Peachtree Nova300 is say it equates (in my mind with the PSB T2s) of a more high fidelity rig sound in the Creek versus a more common stereo sound in the Peachtree. The Creek is more sophisticated and better under the aural microscope (things are in the right place and delineated more clearly). But I’d be willing to bet the Peachtree would have killer synergy with some other speakers--not that it doesn’t sound good with the T2s.
And finally, I should say this. The Peachtree might best the Creek and the Primaluna with orchestra works in my system. This might be because some classical recordings present more of an aggregate picture as opposed to imaging detail. If the music is recorded to look like a class picture of 50 kids as opposed to a quintent of five friends, the Peachtree can shine as it has gobs of power. But the Primaluna and the Creek can show you that picture of five kids better, as they depict the intimacy of detail and mood better. I hope that makes sense!
