best preamps

I'm ashamed about my Schiit Freya...it's not expensive enough to be taken seriously, and although it sounds fabulous it engenders scorn and shunning by high end audio geeks who spend multiples of its cost on other things...I mentioned it at Goodwin's recently and several sales dudes had to be restrained from physically attacking me...fortunately my attorney got a gigantic settlement from them, and now I can get that ARC reference I always wanted thus restoring what's left of my credibility. However, I decided to keep the Freya and bought another Santa Cruz guitar instead. Credibility Schmedibility!

folkfreak graciously invited me over to his place to hear his system, which includes a Ref 40. He runs it with the top cover off, so I was able to see it’s guts. That pre is a thing of beauty, a real work of art. But for me to spend 25 g’s on a pre (assuming I had it), it would have to provide an out-of-body musical experience. I think the law of diminishing returns has never been more true than today. The guitar I'd buy would be a Gibson J-200.

I'm ashamed about my Schiit Freya...it's not expensive enough to be taken seriously, and although it sounds fabulous it engenders scorn and shunning by high end audio geeks who spend multiples of its cost on other things

This is typical of many "hi-end" audio geeks that value sound with how a piece of equipment looks, polished machined cases and lights or how expensive it is.
They are the audiophile "glitz brigade" and are only interested in presenting their shiny equipment up on a pedestals were it does the most damage to image and depth perception, which is in between the speakers.
But hey it's the perfect place to gaze and ogle at from the listening position. 
Don't worry Wolf you've got it where it counts, on the inside. And have many $k's still in the bank.

Cheers George 

I don't have THAT many $k's (for the purposes of this conversation anyway...don't wanna trigger an audit)...remember the aforementioned Santa Cruz? Cocobolo my sneakers away. And it has to be pointed out often that it's way more fun to find relatively inexpensive great sounding stuff than arbitrarily emptying your pockets in the direction of an Audio Salon "Professional." 

Jeff Rowland Consonance / We can close this discussion now :-)