Tube Pre-amp BAT, ARC, EAR, Sonic Frontiers


Hello everybody
My system is:
Accuphase dp-57
Electrocompaniet AW120
Usher Audio CP-6381

I need a preamp. After reading lots of topics i marked personally: BAT, Sonic Frontiers, ARC and EAR pre-amps. Does anyone have any ideas which one could match better? Or maybe another suggestion?
Unfortunatly I have no possibility to listen to them in my system. EAR is an exeption. I will listen to EAR-864 tomorrow. But I am more inspired of SF and BAT.
:-)
snarkonmars
yeah Audphile1
that's what I know
i was just wandering what did Atmasphere mean by: " Snarkonmars, I don't think SF ever made a balanced preamp, although they have the connections. At least I say that in the context of being fully balanced throughout, like our preamps are."

:-)
I recon that fully balanced preamp does not allow you to connect via RCA (XLR-RCA adapter is a compromise anyway). If you have option to connect with XLR and RCA this is just more flexible and universal...
I got rid of the Line 2. My P8i drives BAT monoblocks directly via its balanced outputs and a pair of 3m interconnects.
Snarkonmars, what I meant was that some products have an XLR connection when the internal circuitry is single-ended. There is no advantage to the connector; the advantage lies in the topography.

BTW any balanced preamp will convert a single-ended signal to balanced without issue or degradation, as part of the normal operation of the preamp. We've not been providing single-ended connections for the most part (although we have always had 2 single-ended line inputs) in an effort to convince the user to hook things up right and get the most out of the preamp as a result (I'm sure that's why BAT has does it that way too). That's why we've always had a balanced input for the phono (in fact we were the first to offer that feature), as it is a balanced source anyway.