Hi Pete,
Thank you for posting about this!
My sincere appreciation goes out to
Srajan @ 6moons.com for all his time and effort in reviewing the L2 Signature Preamplifier. It's an 11-page tour de force that covers all the facets of this unique design, and I just finished reading the wrap-up and I am deeply honored to see the L2 received the very rare Lunar Eclipse Award!
For those interested in reading about the L2 design approach, how it teams up with various amplifiers and speakers, and how it left its impression on the man who has literally reviewed several
hundreds of components since 2002, at all starts here:
https://6moons.com/audioreview_articles/vinnierossi/Here are just a few highlights from the review that I am still processing - very powerful stuff!
We'll skip variation #4 as well because it too would have meant kicking a man whilst down. The 12AU7 in Nagra's Classic just couldn't compete against the [L2 equipped with] Takatsuki 300B...
This underscored at least in my private appointment calender how today's L2 truly was a class apart to justify its tariff in full. There was no sense comparing it to other preamps... Hifi reviews aren't blood sports...
Vinnie's L2 now allowed one to clone advanced SET attributes from properly spec'd transistor amps. De facto it meant, 1/ hitching that type sound to SET-unfriendly 'normal' speakers and 2/, doing so with no impact on musical choices.
A solution as elegantly simple as Vinnie Rossi's L2 preamp we might have expected from one of the big established tube houses like Audio Research, Conrad Johnson, VTL... yet none of them—not one!—managed. The global market has nothing at all like it. L2 is the first and only one of its kind...
L2 stands alone. It also does in offering that very practical alternate tube-less path of Jfet buffer for when your glass may be down awaiting replacement, or for when you need a bypass. It does so with its 2.5V, 4V and 5V toggles which take tube specimens from all three voltage families. It does so with its optional DAC and phono boards, with its special-order headphone amp module. To anyone who's been in hifi long enough to know that invariably, you can find something very similar behind a different face plate, the Vinnie Rossi L2 is a major stumper. With it, there just isn't, period...
With the Vinnie Rossi L2 line stage, that well-trodden claim—of direct-heated triodes being the most linear low-distortion audio gain devices ever made—has finally grown legs to stand on and not just walk but sprint like a racer... As now truly themselves without the traditional crutches or interpreters, they finally step into the bright light of day with genuine purity and speed. And that equals bandwidth, noise and resolution figures which are on par with the best of transistors. The resultant sonics are very special!
Also - if you are interested what is coming next (late summer 2019), don't forget to read page 10.
With much gratitude,
Vinnie
