M-Audio DMP3

The DMP3 is one of the first preamps I looked at when I had embarked on my quest & I thought it was a very smart little preamp,but I did not need a 2 channel,so I looked elsewhere for a budget,single channel preamp.
At the time,Oren had warned me that tube driven amps were garbage,as they produced distortion...but then I was thinking; isn't that the whole point of tube amps,to add distortion to achieve the warm sound??
With that in mind,I started to investigate the concept of even harmonic distortion...which led to my interest in the Samson C Valve preamp...it was tube driven,but the unit gave you a bypass option,saturation control,a limiter,an enhancer,effect send & a VU meter,so I thought it would be a good buy.
Upon looking into the specifications of the Samson,the tech specs were no better than the specs in my Tascam...so all I could expect from the Samson,was more dB gain...but with added noise,so I scratched the Samson off of my list.
Most of the budget preamps I looked at-as well as the high end ones,were tube driven-so again,I thought to myself; if tubes & their distortion do nothing but add unwanted coloration to a recording,then why are so many companies manufacturing preamps with tubes....is this a retro lo-fi fascination that people have,like with the whole Mellotron craze??
The deeper I dug into product articles & user reviews,the more skeptical I became of budget preamps altogether-tube driven or otherwise....so I was on a mission to stick to a certain price range,in order to avoid buying the "wrong" preamp for my Tascam.
The main issue that led me back to the M-Audio preamp,was that I really started to dread having to make even more payments on yet another big purchase,as the Presonus Eureka is $499 and as it is,I still have one final payment to make on my M-Audio controller & now I am bogged down with a remaining 3 payments on my Tascam...so I had to do some hard thinking to scale down my studio budget.
I strongly suspect that most pro engineers would not recognize the M-Audio DMP3 as a studio-worthy preamp & maybe not even worthwhile for a project studio...and understandably so,given it's ultra-budget price.....as it really made me wonder also,despite the enormous amount of good reviews on it.
Scores of people have said,that the DMP3 is a great bang for the buck...but what does that really mean??
Does it mean that given it's low price tag,it's a clean,low noise unit that will improve your recordings better than say,a Behringer preamp would....or does it mean that the DMP3 is on par with the $500 preamps,in terms of a clean performance??
[size=12Based on everything I've read in the last few days(& I've been on my PC for several hours each day),it now seems evident that the DMP3 is quite an extraordinary piece of gear,in that M-Audio has managed to circumvent all of the riff raff of jamming a bunch of unnecessary cosmetic novelties to appease the average hobbyist and have only placed their money where it was absolutely crucial,to produce the cleanest,most transparent preamp possible for the price.pt][/size]
The two most valuable pieces of advice I have heard in all of this-one of which Oren had mentioned to me,is that you choose the most basic,but the most well designed product that a company has to offer and from what someone had posted on a gear forum,was that you should choose the most transparent & clean preamp you can find & then worry about adding coloration,later in the mix.
If I did not at least give the M-Audio DMP3 a good demo-ing beforehand,then I think I would be doing myself a terrible disservice by going hog wild & opting for the Presonus instead.

http://www.m-audio.com/products/en_us/DMP3.html

-Thom