[Sonnova]

On Thu, 24 Sep 2009 11:17:06 -0700, wrote
(in article ):

On Sep 24, 8:54=A0am, Sonnova wrote:

Gentlemen, looking at what this unit has in it, buyers, if any, will be
getting monumentally ripped-off. I am flabbergasted by the price of this
thing. High-end audio has finally gone TOO FAR. My humble opinion, you
understand. 8^)

Who are you calling a 'gentleman'?

That being written, it is a sad, brutal fact that there are but so
many audio circuits and but so many sorts of components to make into
those circuits.

In my opinion, there is no audio component on the face of the earth
with the remote, very distantly remote possible exception of speakers
that justifies a real-world cost of more than $2,000 or so in 2009 US
dollars - and even that is a stretch.

Peter Wieck
Melrose Park, PA


Well, as for the "gentlemen" part, I must admit that I was giving you all the
benefit of the doubt. 8^)

But I agree with your point. This preamp is OUTRAGEOUSLY PRICED. There is
simply NO way anyone could justify this amount of money for this thing. I've
listened to it today, and it has no bad traits that I can detect and sounds
fine. In fact. I don't notice (yet) any difference between it and my AR SP11
Mk III which is almost 20 years old! One thing that is puzzling though.
According to the user's manual, which I was perusing late last night, the
preamp INVERTs the signal! Now I know that it has an odd number of active
stages (three per channel: two tube gain stages and one MOSFET buffer stage),
but still, I would think that they could have opted for a drain-follower on
the MOSFET and gotten an even lower output impedance (the reason given for
the MOSFET buffer in the first place) without inverting the signal.