DAC without a preamp

No sense running two preamps in series, but is that what's really happening?

[nonyabeezwax]

Paul. I luv the information you give but equally appreciate your humor. I am old"ouch" enough to get it.

[charleshadden]

You mentioned driving an AMP directly from the DAC using your equipment. Though it was workable, you still preferred having a Preamp inline. I recently had a situation where my Preamp (the pre-outs of a NAD Receiver) give out one me. While trying to isolate the cause, I tried using the DAC (Stellar) to drive my amp (S300). It had WAY more power than needed to accomplish the job, but it was thin and lacked any kind of body. I still had a big sound stage and there was definitely instrument spaced all over that stage, but they were small and confined in space. and virtually no warmness of any kind. Now I know that cabling can affect this a lot (warmness) but not to this extreme. Once I got the NAD back inline and working properly the whole world came alive again. I have talked to a number of professionals (I think one of yours also) that used this same layout, using the NAD as a pre-amp. When I go to get a real Preamp, where might we see a PS audio pre, fall in the warmness spectrum?

[andrefortune]

Great meeting Paul and his son Scott today at the UK Hi-Fi Show!

Some great conversations and definitely one of the best setups in show price and budget aside!

Crazy soundstage width and depth!

Paul definitely practices what he preaches and his setup/stand clearly showed!

A true engineer that stands behind their product!

[arfer]

A digital volume control prior to the dac chip cannot be lossless, because you are not using the full dynamic range of the dac chip at lower volumes. That is why companies like Auralic implement a digital volume control in their lower range equipment and an analog one after the dac in their higher end stuff

[wyup]

Digital Volume, however precise in bit math in practice at low volumes loses dynamic range and produces a low voltage signal that a dac is not usually optimised to produce. Dacs reach best sinad close to full scale amplitude. One thing is the digital word and another the quality and control of the swinging voltage it generates. Preamplifiers are optimised to lower the voltage, preserve signal quality and present a correct interface to a power amplifier. It is true that dacs today produce a high enough full scale signal (2.2V, 4V) that doesn't need preamplification, but we need to drive a power amplifier at such low voltages and keep the integrity of the signal throughout, and that is the speciality of a preamp or a good analog volume control. Some power amps today reach full power at around 1 Volt of input, we need to lower the signal a lot for a sane volume..

[Jenny_Digital]

Hey Paul, do digital pots add significant noise to the signal chain when quiescent, E.G. not changing levels. I could understand noise during transition from the digital side and to some extent thermal noise, but they are a bit _black box_ in nature.

[angkaras]

Hi Paul may i suggest something i use in my system, is an ION from ideon audio dac with very good preamplifier

[LuxAudio]

Oh, that AvR and mega changer are doing some bad math too.

[johannkrist]

I use Rega DAC R. It's perfect for that. I plug all the digital into it, including the TV. It's recently discontinued but might be available somewhere used.

[Shoebutie]

Is Paul saying that modern DACs with a volume control are the equal to a DAC with no volume control fed into a preamp?

[ThinkingBetter]

The line output of any modern DAC is providing an analog output with enough voltage range to feed into a power amplifier without the need of a pre-amp. And with lossless volume control, the need of a pre-amp today is really only if you also play analog music and need to switch the power amp to a turntable source. Nowadays I listen to digital music only and the entire notion of a pre-amp is sort of meaningless and adding one to the signal path is only going to degrade the signal integrity.

[NoEggu]

If you want to collect CDs, then by all means, have at it.
But to be inconvenienced with having to constantly swap CDs, and be limited to the songs on a CD, is not something that I recommend.

Years ago, I ripped all of my CDs, and installed JRiver's Media Center on a nothing special laptop.
Now I can play any song from my CDs, and never have to get up or be interrupted. And I can filter and sort and make playlists and smartlists. And I can purchase digital downloads and add them to my library. And I can stream from Qobuz, etc.

My laptop outputs a digital data stream to my DAC. So it sounds very good.
And if you want to reduce jitter, then add a transport.

[damondhorner]

His 2 CD players can be connected, then run as one 600 disc player if I'm not mistaken. Then he only needs to run it into his AVR.

[sidesup]

Quick! Somebody send Paul a letter that's not boring or redundant.

[JimClark-rwzw]

In my experience most DACs have lower voltage output than a typical preamp and sound flatter. Usually 2-3 volts vs 6-7 from a preamp.

[crazydwarfer]

Why wouldn't he just feed the CDs into his AVR? It has an amp, as we'll ass a built-in DAC. Judging by the blind listening tests it's usually from really hard to almost impossible to tell the difference between two or more DACs and Amps.

[Scopolamine]

Well that was a confusing explanation.

[MariusMocan-mndo]

All your videos have wires that drive me crazy lol

[rollingtroll]

What I mostly don’t get is how he can’t find a dac with multiple inputs. I never saw a serious one that didn’t? I personally use a North Star essensio but even a simple denon from the nineties already had that.
That said, you can’t polish a turd. If you are playing with 300 disc changers and an avr, the dac may not solve your issues. There are no serious 300 disc changers and there are only a handful of really good avrs. I don’t know what your speakers are but I fear the avr and cd players may be a link so weak a good dac won’t save ya.
If you want that convenience of all of your music and also quality, may I introduce you to the world of streaming? Also allows for way higher quality than CD 😁

[darwinwallace]

There is a company that is building a good DAC with a preamp, Sim Audio MOON 891