How to judge a preamp's sound

hilde

i would say that most high end preamps/linestages do have a distinctive tonality / ’sound’ that can be consistently heard -- even in driving a variety of amps

this can be in terms of tonality, drive/prat, grain/pixel size so to speak, size and depth of image, clarity/precision of imaging or lack thereof

of course there can be notable exceptions (e.g., signfiicant impedance mismatch, cabling complications...) but by and large, in my experience, this is true

 A reviewer usually uses equipment they are familiar with, not just throwing random gear into a review. 

you can hear tendencies in preamps that carry accross different power amplifiers much in the same way different phono preamps can sound  distinctive despite different turntables, cartridges and amplifiers. 
synergy matching is very important to optimize the overall sound.  

hilde45
How to judge a preamp’s sound

The ultimate preamp shouldn’t have a sound, it should sound like nothing eg. a piece of wire, like going direct from source to poweramp.

Now if you have a source that needs a bandaid fix, by coloring with some sort of distortion, then there are many preamps that can do this, but finding the right one is a big ask.

Wouldn’t it be better and far cheaper to change the source to one you like, and then go direct with it to the poweramp for the ultimate in transparency and dynamics and lowest possible distortion/coloration?.

Cheers George

Thanks for the informed replies. They make sense. (And @russ69 I didn't get the sense they were throwing in amps at random.)

I have read so many posts where people discuss the major differences between amps that I figured it would be hard to estimate the character of the preamp across those differences. I imagined someone trying to describe the flavor of a bland meat in, say, a curry, a tomato sauce, a hollandaise, etc. But this analogy appears to be a bad one. Glad to know better.