Bent Audio Autoformer vs Tube Pre

My source is fully balanced so to take full advantage of that, a fully balanced pre is needed.

I had a Bent remote (ALPS) on my Dude. It's just a motor that's on the back of the Shallco attenuator. There's nothing to it.

The Bent Autoformer VC is excellent. Sixty-one 1dB steps, from -54dB to +7dB, all done via instrumentation-quality reed relays rated for billions of operations. The power they consume is used solely for the relay switching circuit. I love them in my preamp. You even get a balance control since each channel has it's own autoformer unit. The cool thing is that with a little surgery, you can restack the nickel laminations to get various amounts of primary inductance - stock they are stacked 3X3 for ~155H. That works fine with my preamp since I'm using the low Z mu-output of the plate CCS, but they can be restacked to 1X1 for ~190H if you like, or 6X6 for ~100H, etc.

They make having a remote control no detriment to the sonics, and there's nothing more ideal than adjusting the volume and balance from the comfort of your listening chair, from where you'll be...listening.

I think it would be interesting if we had more interaction from more manufacturers.

Absolutely. It would make this site more intellectually stimulating and more Asylum-like. The usual pattern is behind the scenes sniping and "programming" of end user/disciples to do their public bidding. Sketchy.

Tony, that sounds like an interesting and logical experiment. No more digital? I can understand that. If I did not have a 10 mo, I would love to run down the tape thing. I will have to settle for DSD and other attempts at SOTA digital....

Ait, that is righteous. There is obviously a little more to its performance than meets the eye.

Jason, doesn't your new dac have a pre-amp section? What is missing sonically when you go direct?