September 2018


Best Of 2018 Blue Note Equipment Awards

Rogue Audio RP-7 Stereo Vacuum Tube Preamplifier
Price: $4995
Click here to read the complete review.

  At a hair less than $5000, this tube preamp is not only good looking, but sounds fantastic, and is an extremely flexible linestage. It features on its front panel and remote a mono switch and a balance control and also sports a home theater processor loop, a dimmable and defeatable display, three unbalanced RCA inputs, two balanced XLR inputs, a pair of outputs (XLR and RCA), a fixed RCA output which can be used for an external headphone amp or CD burner, etc., Its fit and finish can be compared to units costing much, much more. The Rogue Audio RP-7 is not only a great tube preamp, but a relative bargain.

Because of many technological advanced, tube components can no longer be criticized using the same language as reviewers and owners of tube equipment once did. This has been a fact for quite some time now. High-end component designers that cannot build a tube component that has a quiet background, extended highs, and a deep, and a pitch stable bass, among other high-end attributes might be better off finding a new line of work. That's not to say that the best solid-state and tube preamplifiers end up sounding the same. Many, including me, find it odd that when considering transparency and lifelike reproduction of music that there can be differences in the sound between a tube and a solid-state component, yet both of them can be considered true to life sounding – or at least as true to life as can be possible with the technology at hand. And this is certainly true of the Rogue Audio RP-7.

For all its positive characteristics, its most impressive is the lifelike reproduction of the instruments and voices it reproduces. And if the recording isn't up to it, or is not reproducing real instruments and voices recorded in a real space, it seems to me as it is awfully close to reproducing exactly what is on the recording without adding any sounds of its own or committing any sins of omission. Yet its sound is different than what I hear from the the best solid-state reproduction in the same price class, or if not in its price class, equivalent level of engineering craftsmanship. The realistic reproduction of instruments and voices, and its ability to be true to the source is due to many factors.

The RP-7's pitch black background has lots to do with this, because if the background is not extremely quiet, this can lead to a decrease in both micro- and macrodynamics, not to mention a preamp's overall transparency. The frequency extremes of the RP-7 were also exemplary – the bass was pitch stable, went as low as the recording demanded and my system reproduces, the treble, as one would hope for from a modern tube preamp, went as high as the recording demanded and my system would reproduce, along with a natural sweetness that tubes are known for and music is meant to sound like (an instrument played "in real life" may hurt one's ears due to its loudness, but its treble shouldn't be "annoying").

Click here to read the complete review.

Previous Annual Blue Note Awards

Product of the Year Awards 2018, 2017, 2016, 2015, 2014, 2013, 2012, 2011, 2010, 2009, 2008, 2007, 2006, 2005, 2004, 2003, 2002, and 2001.