Music First Audio Passive Magnetic Preamplifiers?

The MFA is said to sound very much like the BENT Audio passive when it used the S&B transformers, I thought the Slagle autoformer version - the BENT TAP-X - sounded even better if you can believe it, and better yet the Lightspeed Attenuator. Given the equipment you have been listening too, I know you could easily try the LSA - not full featured or anything, but for sound? I've not heard a better passive.

I built a passive for my bench testing of audio equipment Ive built (amplifiers and such) using shallco and roderstein mkII resistors. I had a buddy visit my uncle who was using my passive and he commented that it sounded exactly like the LSA. He owns the LSA but I have never heard the LSA with my own ears so i can't second his opinion. I can say that I would rather listen to my classic or Ref MFA units than the resistive passive I built :)

Honestly I'm not knocking the LSA but i probably will not go out of my way to audition it either. I love the fact that the MFA units will inherently convert a S.E. signal to a balanced signal as well.

Perhaps my uncles buddy will bring his LSA by one day in which case illl haul the classic over :)

MFA is certainly a more flexible unit, as are the BENTs.

Yes, I think that the type of quality one can approach with the classic at ~3k is astounding with the copy classic...I'm not a fan of silver wiring so much :) though I have heard some silver sound quite good.

I'm sure the Bent Audio gear is extremely good as well but I have not been privy to it. I also once had the Bat Rex, absolutely no contest for the classic.

Regards....

Audiofun, what does your system consist of? Was the shootout performed in your system or someone else's? Was it blinded in any way?

I am curious to hear more about the "current generation" TRL reference pre-amp you heard since most of those units are overseas. A majority of the references stateside are 10-15 years old (and older....).

There have been recent shootouts between the recent generation TRL Dude (mid-level TRL unit) and the Concert Fidelity and AR anniversary addition by people I know in high resolution systems with state of the art conditioning, etc, and the results were the exact opposite of your findings.

After spending the past weekend at Axpona, it reconfirmed that audio is a wickedly subjective hobby and seems to be steered by system and brain chemistry more than anything else. I guess that is part of what makes it entertaining and fun....