best preamps

Go get a Stereophile magazine in April or October, their Recommended Components issues, and you can see what Stereophile feels that are the best preamps now. This list doesn’t take into account older preamps, only current offerings. The newest is not necessarily the best, it’s just the newest.

System synergy is what it’s all about and some products don’t match up together as well as others, that is why there are so many variables.

CAT SL1, cj Premier 2, 3, & 7, Counterpoint SA9/11, MFA, Klyne, Mark Levinson, Krell, Spectral, Motif, Dennessen JC80, Rowland Research, Threshhold and many many others were all at one time considered tops in preamps and are still very relevant today. In terms of value, I’d take used gear anyday over new for the nostalgia of it and the cost savings over new.

You have to make some decisions:
Balanced or single-ended
Tube or solid state
Generally, balanced reduces the coloration of the interconnect cables, but does so best if the preamp supports AES48, the balanced line standard. Many balanced high end audio preamps do not support the standard. If your amplifier only has a single-ended input, the incentive to go balanced is certainly reduced (although if you run a turntable, all phono cartridges are naturally balanced sources).

Tubes tend to sound smoother but often have more noise (not hum, just hiss), although all preamps make some noise. Tubes require occasional service, which is why the tubes are in sockets. However signal tubes often used in preamps can run well over 10,000 hours.

So a more meaningful list can be more easily compiled once these choices are sorted out.

Yipsilon I like the TSP 100 MK 11

@atmasphere

+1, as to good advice. Pay attention to impedance matching, particularly with amps. 

Just bought a C-J GAT S2 (haven't received it yet), but also considered the Koda K-15EX, Soulution 725 and Audionet PRE G2 (to mate with my Audionet MAX amps), however, my dream pre would be the VAC Statement, but at $78K it was way out of my reach.