Looking For The Best Pre-Amp Match For A Pair of Classe Omega Amplifiers


Going to pick up a pair of Classe Omega monoblock amplifiers this week. Need to select a pre-amp for it. 

 

Was wondering which Classe pre-amps  were considered their best offerings?

 

Any thoughts or insights would be greatly appreciated.

neonknight

What is the rest of your system and venue? Photos can be posted under your used ID. 
 

What are your sound preferences and preferred music types?

 

 

Don’t have time to post pics for a bit, am at work. Speakers are JBL 4365 with a pair of Velodyne HGS12 servo subs. Sources are a SOTA Cosmos Eclipse with SME V and Transfiguration Proteus and Scheu Analog das Laufwerk No2 with Dynavector DV505 arms and Ortofon MC2000 and MC 3000 II cartridges. Digital is an Audio Magic Kukama DAC with Mac Mini server. Cabling is Wireworld Eclipse 8, power cords from Pi Audio. Room is 16 ’ by 19’ with 8’ ceilings.

 

Music types are all across the board. Folk, Jazz, pop, new age, classical, country, blues, electronic, just about anything except opera.

 

Sound preferences? As neutral as possible within my moderate budget. Prefer a bit of warmth and texture over clinical presentation if push comes to shove. But I no longer care for all the overt colorations you get from most tube gear, pretty much in the solid state world, especially with these speakers. 

I had Classe amps with my Classe SSP-800.  Fairly good for both music and video, but unreliable and not as good as a dedicated two channel preamp.  It was the Classe processor's second failure that got me started down the rabbit hole of better sounding music.  I would look at the Audionet Pre G2.  It took everything to another level.  I also had the Audionet Pre1 G3.  It  was superior to the Classe, but the PreG2 is the bomb.  

@neonknight - I also had in home demo of McIntosh C2700 tube preamp and C53 SS preamp.  Both sounded veiled compared to the same amps with Audionet. I had heard what a great match Classe / McIntosh and B and W are. (I had 802Ns at the time) but for clarity and resolution IMHO look elsewhere.

Never been a fan of McIntosh myself either although I have had one friend system with MC60 and a Mac pre with Tannoy Westminster speakers sound nice. But still not my choice.

So Audionet can be on the short list, but it seems very few are on the used US market, at least at this time.

Be curious to know if any other candidates get mentioned.