@chakster TBH, I tested the gold note and the LFD side by side in my system for about a week and with several listening buddies over, and the LFD simply destroyed the gold note no matter what settings I had the Gold note on. It's a fine preemplifier, and it has a lot of flexibility, but I was surprised at how inferior a performance it was compared to the LFD. But then again, that was just one side by side in one system, so obviously not applicable to everything