Their heatsinks must suck.

I'm surprised preamps can do that: I thought that since it is a relatively mature technology, all the nonlinearities would be worked out by now. Interesting.

Since I've been playing around with the idea of using a pro grade soundcard as the source/preamp(M-Audio Audiophile 2496, etc) for a while now, I'm kind of interested in what kind of effect it'd have vs a seperate preamp. $100 for a source and preamp would be a steal.