JSawyer09 -- You're welcome!
As you probably realize, you would only be able to truly bypass the preamp stage in the integrated amp if it provides preamp-out and power amp-in jacks on its rear panel. These would normally be jumpered together, and to bypass the preamp stage you would remove those jumpers and connect the dac1 output to the power amp-in jacks. Many (most?) integrateds don't provide those jacks, though.
If you wish to do so, there would be no harm in trying the setup I described with cd player analog outputs and dac1 analog outputs both connected to line-level inputs of the amplifier. That will most probably work ok, as I indicated, and if hum problems resulted they would be immediately apparent.
Regards,
-- Al
As you probably realize, you would only be able to truly bypass the preamp stage in the integrated amp if it provides preamp-out and power amp-in jacks on its rear panel. These would normally be jumpered together, and to bypass the preamp stage you would remove those jumpers and connect the dac1 output to the power amp-in jacks. Many (most?) integrateds don't provide those jacks, though.
If you wish to do so, there would be no harm in trying the setup I described with cd player analog outputs and dac1 analog outputs both connected to line-level inputs of the amplifier. That will most probably work ok, as I indicated, and if hum problems resulted they would be immediately apparent.
Regards,
-- Al