best preamp ever - cost is no object

i feel that this question in itself is actually unanswerable.
having read all the above posts/arguaments further emphasises this point.
until the state of the art reaches sonic realism we are all clutching at straws.
compare any audio system to live music and all flaws become apparent.
synergy also plays a major part in many of these arguments.
we may as well just ask what is the best audio system and be done with it!
the preamp is a piece of a system and cannot single handedly make or break a system.
i am afraid that the perfect pre just does not exist yet.
the search goes on for us all.
enjoy what you have and if an upgrade works and offers good value then buy it.
just dont think that you have the best because it will be beaten one day!

The problem here is that the audio industry in general has been lying for a very long time- decades. If a manufacturer, dealer or distributor's lips are moving, he's lying. Seems like everyone says they have the 'best' and the English language being what it is there can only be one 'best'.

The result is everybody is so used to this that they have to take the stuff home and actually see if it works for them. The problem then is that you can't listen to everything, and quite often two people who have radically different experiences and equipment use exactly the same language to describe some pretty different phenomena.

In this context there can be no best- only bedlam.

If you narrow the field, it becomes possible to make some distinctions. For example, I am safe even though I say it myself, in saying that the MP-1 is the best tube preamp at driving long interconnects. There are solid state preamps that can do the same thing, but in the long interconnect department in the tube world there are very few players.

So if might be that if this thread is to go anywhere and be useful, that we create the distinctions that are important, like the long cable example- like, who is the best at working with low output moving coil without step-up devices? I would make a distinction between tube and transistor so that there will be two answers, since we likely will not solve the tube /transistor debate in this thread...

asking a question about what is the best, when the answer is subjective, is really a rhetorical question.

what is the value of a specific answer ?

As long as audiophiles keep following advice of all these gurus whose disdain for technical performance only brings confusion, the only advancement we'll see is that of ignorance. The ability to drive a long line is only one of many requirements a good preamp should pass. A noise floor below the source's is another. Unlimited slew rate yet another, etc. But the guru says, "This (pre)amp is not musical and has no pace, my foot isn't even tapping...". What is this term? How do you define 'musical'? Is a Sony Walkman unmusical? Audio is already infested by this kind of arbitrary and subjective terms. Problem is, audio is NOT like cooking, or painting, or composing sonatas. Audio is a science (a physics application actually), and therefore is dominated by technical factors.

Cooking, painting and composing have also undeniable technical factors. You will not find a chef ignoring the proportions of ingredients, or a painter not knowing the virtues of brushes and canvases, or a composer ignoring the musical scale or the soloist's physical limits. But technical and objective factors must be subordinated to art, or the outcome will be artificial. Conversely, artistic and subjective factors must not command the design of an audio product, or the result will be... colored and artificial! Even speakers and phono cartridges, which seem to be closer to the art vs. science boundary than purely electronic products, depend heavily on objective parameters, much more than artistic ones.

In conclusion, any thread of this type is interesting, but will never produce a definite answer, simply because everybody has a subjective opinion involving his experience, taste, prejudices and mood. I would not be surprised to find a thousand music lovers claiming their iPOD is the very best audio player in the world, "cost is no object". And they would be right, as far as they are concerned.

Yes, it's a free world, but it's also beginning to sound like anarchy.

Regards,

Jmaldonado, it is a free world (at least part of it), subjective evaluations will always drive buying decisions, and it isn't anarchy, it is capitalism. If you make a better mouse trap, the world will beat a path to your door. I do agree with your opinion that the notion of the "best" preamp will only get personal testimonials, but that is really why Audiogon forums exist.