Preamps can color sound considerably. Surprising?

This is exactly why I eschew active preamps. I have owned quite a few well respected ones, the last being a Don Sachs which was very good. But when compared to a good passive, it's just no contest. As long as you have reasonably efficient speakers, robust source components and an amplifier that is easily driven, there is no need for gain that you are effectively going to throw away.

The only "authentic" sound is what the guys in the studio heard.

On particular headphones or monitor speakers, with their amplification, after the mics, mixing board adjustments and additions, and all the intentions for that mix to be played over other kinds of speakers (car, radio, etc.).

It's color all the way down.

@wolf_garcia 

Those engineers operating the studio gear are putting that sacred "absolute sound" through miles of wires, pan pots, addled brains, unclean tape heads, unclean bald heads, digital manipulation, badly tuned pianos, and personal tastes just like the home hifi geek. The only way around it is to hire musicians to form a circle around you while you lie on the floor after recently having cleaned your ears. Preamps sound however the designer wanted them to so it's up to you to decide what sonic manipulation you prefer. If you're lucky you can enjoy music...or spoken word...or dump trucks backing up...lucky you.

+1, An effective dose of reality nicely summarized.

Charles

With every component of every preamp being different of course they will all sound different.  Just as tube rolling changes the sound so do capacitor’s, transformers, resistors etc.   And today, SS preamps can sound so amazing close to tubes it’s scary!

I’m not sure if this matters but if you think about it, a typical preamp amplifies millionth to volts so a thousand or so times but an amp just takes volts and amplifies less than 100. The pre amp does more “work” & is more susceptible to distortion & extraneous noises because the signal they deal with is so much smaller.