I had the Mcintosh C34V preamp for almost two years now and I paid around $1100 bucks thru my favorite fleabay auction site. I want to give my two cents on this preamp for those who are new at this hobby but yet would like to start off by looking at quality componets without breaking the bank, so here we go.
First of all, it is a very flexible componet , i use this preamp strictly for music! no 5 channels or hdmi but I dont care! it has a built in 20 -25 watts monitor amp which at one point in time I used it to run my B and W (I no have money to buy a separated amplifier yet, however, I finally got one last month), surprisingly they sounded pretty dog gone great, the monitor amp ran my 804s without a problem. It has 3 outputs for your amps/speakers, one set is the main and the other two sets which can be switch on and off. Therefore a total of FOUR OUTPUTS!! I only own 2 sets of speakers so it's a nice to know that I have room for 2 more sets. The built in equalizer are pretty handy as well although I kept them in the center at all the time for the natural purist sound; the compandor function is quite nice when you want the musical details to comeout during low volume (you know when you are the only one awake at 3 am in the morning and has the need to fed you ears without disturbing your neighbors) and of course plenty of inputs for CD, tuner, etc. Quality wise: undisputed. Period. Will outlast you and me. not excessively heavy but weight distribution leaning to the right I think (or left) I inadvertedly left the preamp on for more the 24 hrs and it felt low grade warmthness not hot at all. Functionally, it does what it suppose to do taking the sound from the source and disperse and separate the the diffrent frequencies with uncanny precision and with accurate dedication, (although it reproduce a silky smooth and warm sound when hooking the speakers to its built in monitor amp) but with my separated rotel amp, it sounds neutral. Your speakers are the final piece of discerning the quality of the sound as you may already know this. Lastly, you don't see this on sale as much, so it is quite rare just like the MC 7200 amp. people tend to hold on to it and for a great reason. I intend to keep mind for a while. I think I paid a fair price given the very good condition that it is in. So if you only have this preamp you can still hook your speakers to the monitor amp, then 6 to 12 months down the road you can then add a stand alone amp. overall this is a separate componet, it's just that the built in monitor amp is a bonus!. I think CV 40 has a monitor amp too as well. Overall, this product is surperb, oh yea it's purddy too! hope this info help you in deciding how you will spend your hard earned money. peace.