DCS Puccini into Lamm M 1.2 w/o preamp?

Martin, I have the Puccinni and had to drive my Ayre MX-R amps directly while my Ayre K5xe was being upgraded for MP. I must tell you that the Puccinni direct to my amps does not hold a candle to the performance I get with my Ayre pre amp. Now I am using SS and you have tube. You may like the direct sound. To my ears the sound was colder and more clinical and I lost the more musical sound I had with the Ayre. The sound direct from the DCS wasn't bad but again IMO it was not nearly as good as with the K5xe.

From what I have read that is a really nice pre amp you have there and I would suggest that you keep it and do your own listening before you sell the ARC. Please give it some time too. Even though your only source is the DCS you may get the best sound letting you ARC drive the Lamn.

I hope this helps.

I don't know if this is of any help to you or not, but my friend used to use an ARC Ref. 3 with his Lamm M2.2s, and the sound is awesome. I recommend that you give it a shot when you get your Lamm amps.

(I say "used to" use, because he just upgraded to the ARC Ref. 5, which is really a slightly more refined Ref. 3, at least to my ears.)

BTW, If you wish to sell your Ref. 3 "dirt cheap", feel free to drop me a line.
(Yeah, this economy has me broke at the moment, or else I would have bought my friends Ref. 3!)
;-)

Martin, FWIW we have customers that have the dCS and they own our preamp for the volume control even though they could go direct. I think the 'cold and clinical' comment above was the reason our customers got a preamp. I don't think the preamp warmed things up due to its sound, I think the dCS made things sound colder through poor interconnect cable control and a digital volume control.

I've had the opposite experience.

With my dCS Scarlatti deck, removing my VTL 7.5 preamp and going direct to my Boulder Amp revealed stunning improvement in all areas, most notably dynamics.

The benefits far outweigh any perceptible loss in resolution at low volumes, IMHO.

I would suggest you try it out for yourself before you decide one way or the other.

I agree with Anupmc.

Direct into the amps is the best way forward unless you have some kind of euphonics happening that you cant live without.

My feeling is the Lamm amp on its own will give you enough tube sound. You can switch the output voltage of the DCS to keep the output optimized, so the comments about the digital volume control are just paranoid.

Keep it around -20 and over for proper listening and it will be more than fine. Below that is still fine, but the nervous audiophile in you may start thinking about the bits. But in reality it will be better than most preamps and interconnects whatever you do. Try it I am sure you will be happy. Resolution beyond most digital.