Vincent SA-31 Hybrid Stereo Preamplifier (2003-18)

The SA-31 produces a rich, seductive sound, whose signature characteristic is a midrange that is dynamically alive and leans just slightly to the warm side of neutral. Together, these qualities help the preamp do a fine job of capturing subtle contours or inflections in both human and instrumental voices. For example, in the opening of “Casi” from Marta Gómez’s Entre Cada Palabra [Chesky] the SA-31 shows great delicacy as it captures the very soft, gently modulated sound of Gómez’s voice accompanied by a bass guitar that deliberately plays only high harmonics sans bass fundamentals. The preamp shows how the singer’s voice remains pure, steady, and clear, even though Gómez is singing at little more than a whisper level, and also draws out the ringing sound of the bass harmonics, which fill the recording space with an almost gamelan-like sound.

One of the SA-31’s greatest strengths is its ability to reproduce continuously shaded tonalities at the edges of notes—shadings that give notes their shape and substance. Perhaps as a result, this preamp presents images that have a consistently pleasing, sculptural solidity—never the flat, “color-by-numbers” quality that some solid-state preamps exhibit.

The only quality I found odd in the SA-31 was a textural discontinuity that sometimes came into play on intensely modulated upper-midrange passages. On the loudest of vocal swells—Eva Cassidy belting out “Stormy Monday” on Live From Blues Alley [Blix Street], for instance—the SA-31 momentarily exhibited a slightly hard, strained quality. This phenomenon doesn’t occur often, but it is noticeable when it does because it is out of character with the preamp’s ordinarily smooth, imperturbable sound.

The SA-31’s bass was hearty and solidly weighted, although I found the preamp did a good but not great job of capturing low-frequency transient and textural details. When I listened to the concert bass drum on “Regular Pleasures” from Patricia Barber’s Verse [Blue Note], for example, the attack of the drum sounded slightly subdued, though its ensuing “boom” and shuddering decay sounded fundamentally correct. Similarly, on Stanley Clarke’s slapped electric bass on the title track of School Days [Nemperor, LP], the sharp, percussive “pops” at the leading edges of notes were rounded-off to a degree, though the bodies of the notes had nearly ideal power and depth. The good news is that the SA-31 consistently puts a firm bass foundation under the music—never sounding anemic down low, as some affordable preamps do. But at the same time, I felt the preamp could be improved if it provided a greater degree of lowfrequency tautness and definition.

Up high the SA-31 sounded sweet, smooth, and silvery, though it was not the last word in reproduction of high-frequency details or of the “air” surrounding instruments. In practice, this turned out to be a mixed blessing. On recordings such as John Abercrombie and Eddie Gomez’s Structures [Chesky, SACD], which features the richly detailed sound of Gene Jackson’s delicately brushed cymbals and drums, the SA-31 sounded generally refined, but it also smoothed over low-level treble details to some degree. However, on recordings such as the Boulez/Chicago reading of Mahler’s Symphony No. 9 [Deutsche Grammophon], whose string passages are apt to sound overly hard or wiry in the first place, the SA-31 turned potentially strident sound into approachably clean, sweet music.

It is a credit to the SA-31 that its sound invites comparisons to today’s best $1000 preamps (e.g., the Rogue Audio Metis or Rotel RCD-1082). In those comparisons, the Vincent is nearly able to hold its own, thanks to its smooth, evocative midrange, free-breathing dynamics, and bass weight and warmth. However, it comes up a bit short in the areas of top-to-bottom detail and definition and high-frequency air. But let me put these comments in perspective. I can count on the fingers of one hand the units I think might offer the Vincent serious competition in its price range (the more versatile but also more expensive NAD C 162 preamp is one of the strongest competitors that comes to mind). The SA-31 is a highly accomplished sub-$500 preamp that offers terrific bang for the buck. Just be aware that there is a tangible gap between the best that good $500 preamps can offer and the better performance that the top $1000 models have on tap.