How much do I need to spend to get a preamp that sounds better than no preamp?

Maximum Gain 10 dB
Freq. Response +0, -1 dB @ 10 Hz and 100 kHz
Distortion < .1 % THD

Hm. We can do that with 1Hz to 400Khz, distortion at 0.01%. And that's with no feedback. And all tube, balanced.

kosst, he has many followers......geez,,,you are one of them. He never designed a product where someone could not use it. He caters to a wide variety of listeners, which is interesting because he almost designs for himself, going after his holy grail in design. As I see it, to listeners wanting the virtues of tubes, but want solid state, and has accomplished that. You just seem to be making fun of him and not giving the man any credit. Who is bigger than he in the diy world, and so generous with his knowledge. This is how I see it. 

kosst, go away, where ever you go angst follows.   

The same goes for this Aleph L preamp it’s one of his favourites, and it came to us audiophiles when it was needed, as he said "we way to much gain in our sources and amps" so it’s not needed at all in the preamps.

And as you can see in the link the Aleph L in red, it’s a direct path from input to output with nothing but input switch and resistors ladder switch in the signal path, only when the head of the volume arrow goes to the left of resistor marked RV6 does this passive become active. https://ibb.co/j8uwJn

And as he states in the specs of the user manual
https://www.passlabs.com/sites/default/files/alman.pdf
"It’s Distortion at full is < 0.1 % THD," and below 3’oclock it becomes passive.
"The sound is as pure as you can get. The distortion and noise figures you will get at this position are not easily measured."

He also asks you to perform an experiment to see if you can hear the differences the active stage makes when it comes into the signal path above 3 o’clock from being a passive state below 3o’clock.



Cheers George