Any thoughts on removing a preamp from your system

Very interesting thread. I am temporarily without a pre and have my Oppo 105 feeding directly to my Classe mono blocks. Will use it this way until my VAC pre arrives in a few weeks thus I will have a good understanding of the differences. Will provide feedback once this happens.

Hi John,
Very nice post concerning your individual encounters with various system
configurations. My experiences parallel yours but I disagree on one point
you made.You aren't hearing more transparency with direct or passive
alternatives, just leaner and diluted sound that lacking vital music
information. The full body and tone you realize was missing is abundantly
present with live music. Listen to a live cello, saxaphone, piano, trumpet
etc. The colors, harmonics, richness and vibrancy of tone is crucial to
music. Any audio component that strips way those natural characteristics
is doing a disservice to the complete musical true. A tenor sax heard live is
so rich and full you could can its tone "fat"(I just heard one 3
days ago in a club, he was unmiked, pure and natural). IMO this so called
transparency you mentioned is fake. You'll never hear this from live
acoustic instruments. They possess big tone, fullness and dramatic
dynamic energy. In the past 3 months I've attended 14 live jazz
performances and these essential qualities are clearly evident and make for
a devine and emotional experience every time. John your active preamp
does a superior job of "retaining" those realistic cues although it still won't
match the live sound. It will get you closer than if you eliminate it from your
system.
Charles,

There is a good argument for passive when the control itself is built into the amplifier, as in an integrated amp.

But when the control is in an external box, the problem is that you are totally subject to the whims of the interconnect cables.

One very common buggaboo is that a passive control will sound fine at full volume, but as you decrease the volume control the bass and overall impact will diminish. You will get better results with shorted cables. So a lot depends on setup.

Because of the lower output impedance of many active preamps, they tend to reduce the artifact of the interconnect cables. In fact this is one of the functions that an active preamp should do- ideally, eliminate the cable artifact entirely.

If the active preamp is good in this department and is also lacking coloration, the result is that it will sound better than a passive setup.

Now if you happen to use balanced lines, the whole idea behind the balanced system is to eliminate cable artifact. It is quite successful at this; without it the Golden Age of Stereo (1954 to 1963) would not have occurred. Not all high end balanced preamps and passive controls support the balanced standard (in fact, no passive control does and only a handful of actives do) so you do still read about people hearing differences between balanced cables. That isn't actually supposed to happen, if it does its a sign that the preamp you are playing does not support the standard.

I am currently breakin in the new PS Audio Direct Stream Dac and I am running it straight into my Pass Labs X350.5 Amp.

First listen was pretty rough, but today, 100 hours later, I am really liking the sound. Quite impressive.

This weekend after I have more than 200 hours on the Dac I will connect up my Preamp and compare.

When I first connected my CD player direct to amps, I though I discovered transparancy and detail. I didn't. I liked it until I realized I was lacking everything that made music musical. I think the preamp is the heart and the back bone.