I recommend an Adcom GFP-750 preamp. It is the most neutral preamp I own, and I have about $30,000 worth of the others I have tried sitting in boxes. Make no mistake -- all of these more exquisitely designed and meticulously assembled beauties have their individual strengths. But the Adcom costs $800-$1200, and has all the inputs (including balanced) you need. And it is ABSOLUTELY, dead-on, FLAT neutral. It will not color anything else you plug into it.

There is a further bonus. With the flip of a front panel switch, you can navigate back and forth between passive and active. If you have high-output sources (and easy-to-drive speakers), you can hear NO preamp. None. Zip. It is a very nice sound, I can assure you.

Do you need some oomph? To wake up your torpid, inefficient speakers, and your flaccid CD player? No problem. Just flick the toggle to "active." You will get an ever-so-slight loss of transparencey, and an EXTREMELY slight sense of loss in the extreme highs (on that less-than-one-percent of your software that gets it done right...), but I doubt you will notice it on the 90%+ of your software that is less than perfectly recorded.

And. This is Adcom. Go ahead -- throw it at that unruly cur who barks (while looking for a place to drop the obligatory morning turd) underneath your window at 5 AM. Go down and pick it back up. It will still work. I have tried this several times, and you have my assurances.

Power amp? You are on your own. But, in my opinion (after 50 years of everything), the preamp is more difficult to get right. And the Adcom will do the job.

And I don't even get paid for this stuff. Shit.