Is there any Streamer/DAC/Preamp good enough to replace a dedicated standalone preamp?


I am getting into digital music server, considering a streamer/DAC/preamp unit like the the Brooklyn Bridge or Teac NT-505.    Has anyone compared its Preamp section against a good dedicated preamp?   I currently have the Conrad Johnson ACT2 and see if I can eliminate a component/cable in the chain without much sacrifice in sound quality.

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  1. If you plug a DAC into a preamp, doesn't the sound of the DAC go through the preamp?
  2. If you remove the preamp and run directly from the DAC, isn't the difference in sound removing the coloration of the preamp?
  3. Do high end preamps add magic fairy dust to signals to improve the quality of the sound?
You have an ACT 2 - not many preamps will beat it let alone an all in one solution with a software volume control.
Phomchick, you are under a couple of false assumptions.

1: A straight line with gain is desirable

Answer: Sometimes no it isn't.

If the dac with volume control makes the system sound sterile and going through a good tube preamp adds some warmth that makes the sound much more enjoyable how is the straight wire with gain that makes you not want to listen to the system a bad thing? Sometimes adding the right colorations are a good thing.

2: The dac may not have a real preamp stage, sometimes you get a decent digial attenuator that does bit restriction to change volume, others use a digital volume control which is discrete resitors on a chip, while others use a potentiometer, while others could use switched resistors with realys to open and close the resistors.

So unless the "volume" control is really good that dac/preamp may actually alter the sound going through it via the volume control.

3: Many dac/preamp aren't real preamplifiers but are just the output stage of the dac with a volume control and therefore may have difficulties driving an amplfier or longer cable runs optimally.

Dave and Troy
Audio Doctor NJ


@audiotroy

Phomchick, you are under a couple of false assumptions.
Not false, you just don’t agree with them...

1: A straight line [wire] with gain is desirable
Of course it is. If all of our electronics behaved like straight wires with gain, it wouldn’t make any difference what components you selected. Of course, this wouldn’t be the best thing for the high end audio industry. As to your suggestion that a "sterile" component can be warmed up by routing it through a warm sounding tube preamp, that is fixing one kind of distortion by adding another type. If that is your thing, okay, I can go along. But the OP asked "Is there any Streamer/DAC/Preamp good enough to replace a dedicated standalone preamp?" To which the correct answer is almost any DAC will do, as the "extra" preamp is adding one (or more) of three things: noise, distortion, and frequency response / tonality anomalies. Remove the preamp and you remove those distortions.
So unless the "volume" control is really good that dac/preamp may actually alter the sound going through it via the volume control.
This is just FUD. Which DACs exhibit these kinds of volume control problems? Do the OP’s suggested DACs, the Mytec Brooklyn Bridge or Teac NT-505 have these problems? And these arguments could apply just as well to the preamp. And if the DAC didn’t even have a volume cointrol, that would be really bad, wouldn’t it? :-)

3: Many dac/preamp aren’t real preamplifiers but are just the output stage of the dac with a volume control and therefore may have difficulties driving an amplfier or longer cable runs optimally.
More FUD. Please suggest a modern audiophile DAC that cannot adequately drive a high impedance amplifier input.