WC,
I am excited to hear about your AWAKENING (words of the cost conscious grey9hound, and I agree). Thanks for your honest reporting, which opens up consideration of the Plinius as a great sounding cheap amp that should interest everyone here. So it seems that in comparison, Dag has a warm personality. It is NOT an issue of compatibility with speakers, etc. The Dag is warm, period. The tone controls to boost HF would make the Dag less warm, or more to the relative neutrality of the Plinius. How does the Dag with treble boost compare to the Ref 10 plus Plinius? Since the Ref 10 has a little warmth, that means the Plinius by itself is probably very neutral. Believe me, if you wanted to save the most money, get the Rane ME 60 for $200 and just use the Rane as a line stage plus EQ, going into the Plinius. This will give you impressive transparency and neutrality and enough gain for most of your music. But if you need the additional gain of the Ref 10, you can still insert the Rane between the Ref 10 and Plinius. The Rane is quite transparent, although not as much as the unique passive Luminous of mrdecibel. The very flexible 30 band adjustments will make you a fine sound tailor--very important. I am now thinking that this is a better option than getting the much more expensive Lux preamp with its tone controls. From all descriptions here of the Lux electronics, it is still warm, possibly comparable or more so than your Ref 10. I believe that the chain of Ref 10+Rane+Plinius might be better in every way than the Lux preamp + Plinius. And you only spend $200 instead of many !000's for the Lux.
This is a milestone for you, because you enjoy the less warm Ref 10 plus Plinius combo more than the relatively warm Dag. Clarity and detail are most important and exciting, and you will eventually realize that warmth gets boring after the honeymoon is over. Maybe amps like the Boulder are at the extreme of sterility, but for now you have the Plinius which seems ideal. Once you realize the importance and excitement of detail/neutrality, you will want to stay away from warm tube stuff. Tube amps like higher impedances, so they will give good dynamics for lower freq, but tube amp output into the very low impedance of the Neo's HF is much worse, which skews the tonal balance away from the HF. This is why tube lovers like them with electrostatics, because they already like rolled off HF which enable toleration of higher volumes. And remember mrdecibel's post that his experience with tube amps was terrible for bass control and accuracy.
I am excited to hear about your AWAKENING (words of the cost conscious grey9hound, and I agree). Thanks for your honest reporting, which opens up consideration of the Plinius as a great sounding cheap amp that should interest everyone here. So it seems that in comparison, Dag has a warm personality. It is NOT an issue of compatibility with speakers, etc. The Dag is warm, period. The tone controls to boost HF would make the Dag less warm, or more to the relative neutrality of the Plinius. How does the Dag with treble boost compare to the Ref 10 plus Plinius? Since the Ref 10 has a little warmth, that means the Plinius by itself is probably very neutral. Believe me, if you wanted to save the most money, get the Rane ME 60 for $200 and just use the Rane as a line stage plus EQ, going into the Plinius. This will give you impressive transparency and neutrality and enough gain for most of your music. But if you need the additional gain of the Ref 10, you can still insert the Rane between the Ref 10 and Plinius. The Rane is quite transparent, although not as much as the unique passive Luminous of mrdecibel. The very flexible 30 band adjustments will make you a fine sound tailor--very important. I am now thinking that this is a better option than getting the much more expensive Lux preamp with its tone controls. From all descriptions here of the Lux electronics, it is still warm, possibly comparable or more so than your Ref 10. I believe that the chain of Ref 10+Rane+Plinius might be better in every way than the Lux preamp + Plinius. And you only spend $200 instead of many !000's for the Lux.
This is a milestone for you, because you enjoy the less warm Ref 10 plus Plinius combo more than the relatively warm Dag. Clarity and detail are most important and exciting, and you will eventually realize that warmth gets boring after the honeymoon is over. Maybe amps like the Boulder are at the extreme of sterility, but for now you have the Plinius which seems ideal. Once you realize the importance and excitement of detail/neutrality, you will want to stay away from warm tube stuff. Tube amps like higher impedances, so they will give good dynamics for lower freq, but tube amp output into the very low impedance of the Neo's HF is much worse, which skews the tonal balance away from the HF. This is why tube lovers like them with electrostatics, because they already like rolled off HF which enable toleration of higher volumes. And remember mrdecibel's post that his experience with tube amps was terrible for bass control and accuracy.