Soundstage, air, musicality, integration with HT, simplicity

remote seems a bit chintzy

First of all, the fellow who claims his HT passthrough loop does not/ didn't work was not nearly resourseful enough. To engage the unity gain loop, one must select "VIDEO" as the main input. Then, everything else falls into place.

I believe this unit was the perfect upgrade from my PV-10a. Everything I loved about the 10 is carried forward and expounded upon, with the addition of a remote, superior attenuation stage, unity-gain mode, and fewer bottles to replace/upgrade. Granted, losing a phono stage is a bummer, but I have given up on vinyl in the spirit of spousal harmony.

The sonic signature of the preamp is subtle, yet present. Very musical, VERY INVOLVING. Just like my ARC D-115mkII amplifier, this baby has me revisiting old CD's...

Until I can obtain a Premier 16 or 17, this is IT for me.
It eats the Anthem for lunch (way, WAY too sterile for my tastes), adds on the good of the PV-10a, and represents sound construction (with albeit a cheapie but logically designed remote) and value.

Similar Products Used:

CJ PV-10a, Sonic Frontiers Anthem Pre-1l, Sony EP-9ES, Homemade tube linestage, Audio Alchemy DLC, Adcom something or another

Huge soundstage, great resolution and depth.

Build quality.

Not a bad sounding unit but the build quality is sub-par for a $2K preamp. The tubes were EXTREMELY microphonic right out of the box, the buttons all stuck out of the faceplate different lengths, and the second theater processor loop was dead. The Musical Fidelity was a little too flashy for me but for $500 less it was constructed with a much higher level of quality. I guess what they say about CJ is true-overdesigned and underbuilt.

Similar Products Used:

Krell KRC-3, Musical Fidelity A3CR, CJ PV-10

Clean, detailed sound with no harshness in upper frequencies. Wonderful soundstaging.

none

I recently upgraded from a c-j PV-10AL which I had greatly enjoyed for almost 3 years. When I listened to the new unit, I was amazed at the improvement that the PV14L offered. The PV14L offers excellant detail that I had not heard with the PV-10AL. Tonally, it seems to be very accurate. The soundstaging and imaging are wonderful.

I had been struggling with some graininess in the sound of some vocals and had assumed that the problem was my cd player or the recordings. When I upgraded the preamp, however, the slight graininess disappeared. The PV-10 is alot of bang for the buck, but not as good as the PV-14L (I believe that the PV-10AL has now been changed to a PV-10BL, so it might be better than my older PV-10AL).

I use the preamp with a Coda/Continuum solid state amplifier and they seem to work well together. My speakers are VonSchwiekert VR-4s. Cabling is mostly Synergistic Research. I sometimes use XLO and Harmonic Technologies.

Similar Products Used:

conrad johnson PV-10AL