I am all set with preamps. I hardly need or ever try anything else besides my preamp. I do have an interest in hope-to-be-coming Lamm L3 preamp, that will be an answer if the X-factor that I described in L1/L2 articles was a manifestation of Lamm’s ingenuity or it was just an accidental and fortuitous side-effect. So, I kind of lazily looking for other manufacturers coming up with their different preamps trying to see if they will talk about the things that I feel are important and “interesting” in preamps.   So far none of them do, so I keep observing and wait when Lamm L3 becomes available to see if it will be able to push what I feel need to be pushed.

A few days back I come across the new Convergent Audio Technology’s SL1 Legend Preamplifier at Soundstage.come. Convergent spent zero marketing efforts, they do not even have a web site, so 100% of Convergent sale is a solicitation  that made up for  Convergent by the industry cheerleaders. This round of the marketing the torch-caring is handled by Marc Mickelson of Soundstage.come

http://www.soundstage.com/equipment/cat_sl1_legend.htm

It works very simple, if the Marc the Cheerleader will show off a lot of tits and will raise her skirt up enough in order he Morons to see a lot of underwear then the “review” was a success and the flock of audio “tits consumers” will come… Here it is happen again…

The Convergent made another preamp - the version #23342 with a few new irrelevant changes that Mickelson is of course pushes as Messiah of amplifiers design. I have no problem with what Convergent does; even I am not a big fun of Ken Stevens and his electronics. He does as anybody else do – making his living, but I do have a lot of problem with what   Mickelson does. His definition of making living is reviewing audio elements, not the idiotically whoring for each industry dirt that agrees to accommodate him. Why I consider the Mickelson’s observations about new Convergent preamp are idiotic?  Because whatever he said is absolutely irrelevant as Mr. Mickelson failed to name the major problem with Convergent preamps and he failed to investigate if the new Convergent preamp suffers from that major problem.

Pretend that Marc Mickelson is a reviewer for a cooking magazine and he is reviewing a new brand of champignons mushrooms. The previous version of the same brand was poisoned and killed whoever have eaten it. So, now Mickelson the food reviewer, drams the market for new champignons that were collected in the same forest by the same people, however he is talking about the tasted of the new mushrooms without mentioning if the mushrooms are poisoned Sound ridicules? Well, it is exactly what the Mickelson does, furthermore and it is very peculiar -  it was exactly who Convergent trusted to review own new preamp.

Now, the Soundstage.come has a policy proposed and enforced by Mark Mickelson himself: the weakness of the “reviewing” component must match the primitivism of a reviewer demands and his/her expertise. So, what does it say about Convergent new preamps if it was given to “review” to a person who expressed enormous ignorance and absolute luck of familiarity with product and its use?

Again and again I find that the model of “reviewing” by Srajan Ebaen is way more justifiable. Srajan informs about the fact that something is available and make zero efforts to assess the value of the fact or to asses Sound. He was the first among all audio whores who understood that he and his writing fools are too simplistic to talk about Sound and any of his/their truly “reviewing” attempts sound more like fish’s farts.

Anyhow, the new Convergent public debut did not take place is a scale of no-nonsense audio. Convergent needs to find somebody who will be able to write/think about audio more seriously… or to continue to make Convergent audio products for … idiots.