While the differences are minor, the T8+ vacuum tube preamp is a bit more "musically involving" that the Insight+ SL solid state preamp. The rest of your system has to be of very high overall quality to pick this out. We think the fact that we have used two wildly different technologies, and achieved nearly the same outstanding results with both, might make you think that we know what we are doing. The differences may be related to overload capability, or perhaps just the inherent limitations of the active devices. Certainly we cannot put numbers on them at this time. If we could, this would allow us to make each technology we use work even better than it does now.
For both our solid state designs and our vacuum tube designs, the object was to not screw up the source material, not to come up with some kind of obvious sonic signature. If your goal is to have your equipment create some kind of signature sound, then you are just designing in some kind of likeable distortion. Our goal is to build equipment that is faithful to the source music, nothing more, nothing less.
The remaining small differences between our use of one technology or another just tells us we don't have perfect results yet. However we are sure that any AVA equipment you choose will provide you with a musical listening experience you will enjoy.
By the way, the Transcendence 8+ is our best selling preamplifier and probably is the best compromise between cost and musical enjoyment we offer at this time. I don't think we have ever had one returned under the terms of our satisfaction guarantee.
Best regards,
Frank Van Alstine
