Tubes Asylum

RE: With a digital source, why preamps at all?

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I can't say if your sound card works the way some older CDPs with digital volume controls did, but those things lost info., when attenuating.

I strongly favor listening level control in the analog domain. The issue of bits being thrown into "oblivion" is not present. Perhaps you should try SY's "heretical unity gain" setup. A very knowledgeable man went to enormous lengths to achieve transparancy.

FWIW, I have a pretty darned good digital playback setup that's "dropped jaws" on several occasions. I then pulled out a LP with the late Sir Neville Marriner conducting a Haydn symphony and "reality" set in. Really good digital is fine, but it is not quite up to really good "vinyl". Of course, large numbers of people are getting better sound out of digital than they did with phonographs. That's a reflection of how poor their LP playback chains were. Hands down, digital offers more "bang for the buck", but good (unfortunately VERY expensive) analog playback chains are superior. I'm lucky I bought in peak revenue times. I certainly can't afford the "up scale" analog stuff now.

Eli D.


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