In reply to:
If you get the cheapest thing you can find i wouldnt expect it to sound all that spectacular to be honest...
If course you could buy a passive preamp which is more like just volume pots but thats a different matter.
For cheap id reccomend the Bottlehead Foreplay, you can build one for around 200 bucks and best part is that its tubes It is a rather good sounding peice
I would agree with you Brandon 100%. The Foreplay is a great pre. But I know someone who has the Foreplay and he says the Radii sounds better (to his ears) with a certain type of tubes. Maybe because it has 3 tubes and it is of a different socket (...one that is more experimentable. Lots of brand for the socket size/voltage for the Radii. Yes the Radii is cheap but it sounds fantastic!!!! As for the passive pre I would put an any passive pre over any integrated becuase the passive pre doesn't ADD anything into the source path. Most passive pre only use a attunuator and Vishay metal film resistors and bypass jumpers which steps down the full volume of the output source. Again nothing added. All you will hear is the sonic signature of the player...whatever that is.
I have done lots of demoing in the last little while and I know I am not much of a fan of tube amps because I find the SS amps gets more punch and detail. But I do like the sound of some Tube Pre... yes it does add something to the signal path but it does sound sweeter to my ears.
I am in the process of selling my Elite Receiver and picking up one of this to connect to a universal player that decodes DTS & DD and push it into separate amps.
http://mapletreeaudio.com/Line5.htm
If I don't get enough cash I plan to put a tube line buffer in between my MF(Musical Fidelity) CD player and MF Integrated amp.
Line 2A SP Preamp/Signal Processor
http://mapletreeaudio.com/assembled.htm 
