boulder, Vitus, EAR, Lamm, Nagra, Parasound, Ayre, MBL, Music Reference/Berning, Air Tight, Atmasphere, Audio Research, C&J, Aesthetix, BAT, Audio Note, Levinson, Krell, SimsAudio, Pass, Sutherland, Halcro, Dartzeel, Einstein, Rogue, FM Acoustics, Manley, Cary, Classé, CAT , Doshi, Herron, Rowland, Crown, Mckintosh, Wavac, VTL, Chord, Linn, Moscode, Vac, YBA, Burmester, Threshold, Hovland, Denon, Luxman, Accuphase, Gryphon and many other that scape to my memory.This statement is misleading. If Raul heard one of our preamps it certainly was not one made in the last ten years (and as you might expect, we've made improvements in that time, some of the most dramatic changes that affected the phono circuits only in the last three years). This causes me to put this list under suspicion as it strains credulity.
Tubes exist these days only for audio, and really for nothing else. That is what keeps the tube industry alive.
To make a tube preamp get the same sort of noise floor as solid state, you have to do similar things that solid state designers do- many use differential circuits as they are lower noise; tube circuits can be built that way with similar benefit.