Onyx 800r.

Basically you need to go to GC or somewhere and listen to them all.

My suggestion is to look a lot at features, connectivity, etc. Yeah, there will be differences in sound, but my take is that the differences are relatively small. On one hand, I have not seen any really crappy, noisy preamps in this range. On the other, none of them has close to the headroom of the class of preamps starting in the price range of the API 3124 (about $600-$700 per channel). Basically, they all sound pretty good if you baby them, and frankly, most preamps sound pretty much the same if they are babied and kept in their most linear range. (That's a pretty good definition of "linear.")

I admit, my experience is limited. I don't try every new unit to hit the shelves. But that's my take for what it's worth. As Jack says, do a lot of listening and make your own conclusions. But don't feel bad about buying something that looks and feels solid and has all the features you want.

If you can solder and follow directions, look into Seventh Circle Audio preamp kits.

I just built two channels of API clones and am working on a Neve clone.

They sound amazing.