How would you describe your design aesthetic and design process?
The key word for us is "musicality". The ultimate goal in designing all of our audio gear is that in the end when you're listening to it, you shouldn't be hearing it — you should just be hearing the music. Along with "musicality" is "reliability", and those are the two things that we focus on with equal intensity. The best sounding piece of gear in the world doesn't do you a lot of good when you're at a session and there are musicians waiting around and something is broken. I've done enough live remotes to be absolutely intolerant of any kind of reliability issues. Those are the two prime objectives, but obviously ergonomics and industrial design play into that as well. Pride of ownership of a good piece of gear goes beyond just knowing it sounds good, but when you go and reach the knob it should feel solid and give you confidence. It shouldn't have whistles and bells that you don't really need and it should be laid out so that you can quickly and easily achieve your task and get on to other important parts of creating music.
There are a lot of preamps being developed and marketed these days, ranging from clones of vintage gear to new variations of tube-based preamps to "Made in China" $200 bargain-basement preamps. What does Grace Design bring to the table that is not being done by other gear developers?
