Can you say more about the pros and cons people debated between the two units? Is your vote for the 26 based on sound quality, or feature set, or both?
These two preamps came out in the same year, with the LS-26 being the more full-featured product. However, the LS-17SE was updated five years later. Does the updated version surpass the LS-26 in general audio quality, if not in feature set?