Aesthetics are on the mark. Full function with more than enough inputs. Cool running and quiet, quiet, quiet.... BLACK BACKGROUNG,,, especially with headphones. Solid and built very well. Again and I am Most impressed with this feature, it is a excellent headphone amp.

BIG

For the money, I'm more than pleased with the Reference. My system is all tubes and my budget allowed for the $500 Wally needed for this pre. The Reference has all of the requirements and none of the space demands that a headphone and phono amp needed since this all comes with the Reference. The remote is full function and does a excellent job of allowing me control from across the room. The base and treble features allow for playback preferences and well recorded material can be played direct, bypassing the tone controls. The Phono section is excellent.

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Dynaco

Good, natural sound. No outside noise or coloration.

Bob Carver, love or hate his products, and this one is to love. I found this on on Ebay, cheap, and decided to give it a try. First, it looks great! Black brushed aluminum, big, heafty, masculine. I have used the CD and phono stage, and both are smooth. No outside coloration, noise, simple, but effective.

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Linn pretek Adcom B&K

Amazing sound, amazing build quality

Large size.

I have put several hours of us on my new Symphonic Reference Preamp and so far I am very, very impressed! The sound is neutral to warm and very, very detailed. It has not shown any hint of harshness even at the upper end of usable volume. The destinction between instruments, vocals and backup vocals is amazing. They no longer just all run together, you can actually place them in the nicley layered sound field. The highs are smooth and detailed and the bass is nice and tight. I found it to have better detail than my AVM30 in analog direct mode and was still much sweeter and smoother sounding than the AVM30! (That blows my mind because usually sweet, smooth sound sacrifices detail, but not with this unit!) Needless to say, I am very, very pleased. It is as non-fatiguing and smooth as the $4500 McIntosh tube preamp I heard recently but with much better detail. Don't get me wrong, the McIntosh was amazing, but this unit just strikes a better balance of smoothness and detail.

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Parasound, Mcintosh, Arcam, Jolida, Rotel.

Sonics are just wonderful. Beats my Bryston.

Large size

- Great construction quality - Very open sound, transparent but not bright. - Liquid, lush tube like quality with the plus of very tight, solid bass. - Great phono stage - Ultra high quality aluminum remote - High quality Alps pots, Torodial transformer big enough for a power amp - Very quiet electronics

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Bryston, Assemblage

Deep and Wide sound stage. Great phono stage that accomodates moving magnet and moving coil cartridges is included. Very low noise, great remote, and excellent build quality.

Large size

I recently purchased the Sunfire Symphonic Reference Preamp at Ultimate Audio. I have been comparing this preamp to a Conrad Johnson tube preamp feeding an Adcom 5802 through a pair of Martin Logans. That said, here we go. This preamp is very tube like sonically. The highs are very sweet and open. The entire sound stage is big, broad and deep. The midrange, especially vocals is extremely neutral and open. I am really shocked at how good this thing sounds. The biggest surprise is the yes "very neutral" phono stage. I listened to the moving magnet setting (it also accomodates moving coils). Sound stage is wide and deep and the lack of coloration is wonderful. This preamp is just unbeatable for the money. I've always favored tube preamps. Bob Carver somehow has captured the open sound of tubes without the coloration. Great job.

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I've owned a lot of equipment over my life time. I started with Dynaco tube gear, moved to McIntosh, Conrad Johnson, Adcom, Sonic Frontier, Audio Research, etc.