Preamp dillema for McCormack Ultra Platinum

What aspects of sound reproduction are most important to you and what are you looking to improve upon with a new preamp?  Will be easier to make recommendations once your particular tastes and goals are better known.  Also, I seem to recall modified McCormack amps may have a relatively low input impedance, and if so not all tubed preamps will work well with your amp (I could be wrong on this though). 

I had a stock RLD-1 in my system on a demo feeding my DNA 0.5 Rev A, and although good I found it to sound a little veiled.  I think your amp deserves better, and frankly I think a $1500 budget might be a bit low for your amp -- a good preamp is critical to getting the most out of your amp so don't cheap out there. 

I have owned both the RLD-1 (with SMc Platinum-Level upgrades) and my current TLC-1 with SMc Signature upgrades (the best Steve can do).  The upgraded TLC-1 is clearly several leagues above the RLD-1 IMO.  The RLD-1 Platinum had oodles of drive but was otherwise forgettable with the equipment I had at the time.  OTOH, the TLC-1 Signature is the best preamp I have owned, out of many.  FWIW, my TLC-1 is run in unity-gain with a buffered output, is powered by an outboard choke power supply (from the SMc VRE-1), and is balanced using very high quality Lundahl transformers.  Unfortunately, I cannot tell you how the stock versions of those preamps sound but if you purchase one you will always have the option of upgrading later. 

This DNA-1 is setup for unbalanced inputs so the input impedance is 100K ohms. My current setup sounds really good, but I want to say there seems to be a very, very slight attenuation or just something missing in the neighborhood of 500 Hz. Perhaps that's just the signature B&K sound...it's not bad by any means, but if I had to put my finger on something, I would start there. Also the upper treble, mainly with the higher register of female vocals, it can sound slightly pitchy for lack of better terms.

It's hard to find the exact fault in my setup but for the sake of discussion, I would say I would like to smooth out the midrange and bring a tiny bit of warmth to the upper treble while maintaining detail and clarity.

Right now I have an Intenso feeding the Ref 50 then into the DNA-1. Instrument and vocal separation is excellent as well as vocal clarity...just seems to reach a little too high at times.

The Ref 50 does not have an analog pass through, "direct" mode I'm fairly sure it will still perform an analog-dig-analog conversion despite removing all tonal and Eq controls.

I agree $1500 is on the low side, but looking for an interim preamp until I can make a larger jump.

Hope that helps.