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What preamp creates the largest soundstage?

I have always loved a large soundstage.  I have a small listening room (10x10) and have mini-monitors, driven by a tube amp.  I have played a lot with speaker placement, room acoustics, listening position to create a large soundstage.  I have rolled tubes on the amp and made dramatic improvements. (I have purposely left details on the brands of tubes, amp and speakers out, because I don’t want side comments to distract from my question)

i have a digital source into a solid state naim preamp.  I home demo’ed a well reviewed preamp, and was surprised at how much the soundstage shrunk, both side to side and top downward.  It was deeper, and did have much of the tube magic, but I could not live without the big soundstage.  

so my question is, does anyone have experience with a preamp that produces a big soundstage?  I am looking for recommendations on what to demo next. While I lean toward tubes, I am open to solid state.  I am okay either new or used, and could spend in the 5k range, but would be happy to spend less.  Also comments on specific brands (i.e. xyz is known to have great soundstage in all their preamps) as opposed to models, are welcome.

and I will be the first to admit that perhaps the very large soundstage is not “accurate”to real music, but boy is it seductive and I love it and can’t live without it.

meiatflask
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atmasphere's avatar
atmasphere
11,800 posts
 
line stage, phono not needed, must have remote.
@meiatflask
Based on your budget, our MP-3 line stage is our most likely candidate.
milpai's avatar
milpai
2,377 posts
 
I have recently upgraded to the Rhumba 1.3 standard version. The change in my average sensitive system is profound. I am amazed at the life-like presentation that this preamp brought to my system. I highly recommend this preamp.
vt4c
31 posts
 
Doubtful question.
"Sound stage" comes from the recording, it is not "created" in the pre-amp, power-amp, the interconnects, or the speakers.
Equipment can only reveal or hide what was included in the recording. They cannot magically add what was not there. Close miked multi track overdubbed piece o crap recordings are dime a dozen. Nice acoustic balanced recordings are not that common. Few people ask for or appreciate it.
Don’t forget speaker placement and room treatments for minimizing reflections. Reflections will smear the image if one was there to begin with. 

sebs
4 posts
 
I will agree but only partialy, yes recording plays huge part in creating soundstage but preamp is egually important. Even best recording from eg chesky records will sound flat, 2d if preamp is not capable of creating holographic, 3d soundstage. I have own preamp from Rotel, Rogue Audio, PrimaLuna, Hegel and currently testing Cyrus. Rotal and Rogue could not create 3d image at all. Primaluna is one of this that acctualy can create soundstage extending beyond and allow speakers to disappear but not at the same level with Hegel or Cyrus. Hegel projects huge, deep, 3d image in all directions, can easily hear sounds to sides of listening position as there were surrounds speakers present, floorstanders complitly disappears leaving only surrounding sound. Cyrus is eqally good but image is moved forward, soundstage is more in front towards the listener and depth shrinks. All this preamp where inserted to exactly same system, cables etc only preamp was changed. Still in quest for preamp, to see what can best hegel p20 and cyrus dac xp with psx-r, both brilliant in this respect. 
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