Secrets of Home Theater and High Fidelity has reviewed the Parasound Halo P 7 preamplifier ($2,000). This is a solid state preamp with built in phono stage, balanced XLR and unbalanced RCA inputs and outputs (photo).
Reviewer Rick Schmidt liked its versatility:
What the P 7 does is allow you to integrate any combination of two channel source components, multichannel source components, two channel amplifiers and multichannel amplifiers.
On balance, he noted:
The P 7 is also just an excellent preamp plain and simple. With little to no sonic character of its own the P 7 simply presents the music as a whole and lets you enjoy.
Read the entire review.