High Gain?

Here's an example of the OP's situation. I bought a Schiit Aegir power amp which doesn't have a lot of gain on its own. I originally purchased a Schiit Saga+ preamp to go with it, which uses a tube buffer in a unity gain circuit -- it adds no additional gain beyond what the source outputs.  

While it worked fine with most recordings, there were some recorded at a lower level in which having the volume knob all the way up on the Saga+ was short of the desired playback level.  I ended up switching to a Lyr 3 preamp which has low gain (+3.5 dB) and high gain (+17 dB) settings. It turned out the low gain setting was all I needed to fix my playback gain problem for all of my recordings.

1 watt, 3 watts.

    What a waste. 

     Headroom is NEEDED. 

 MY OPINION, for the people who get butthurt easily, too bad, get some skin.  

Yes, it’s sarcasm.  

Given what I've read and judging from some of the responses here I'm now thinking that perhaps looking at this strictly as a measurement isn't really helpful.  Listening and experimentation is.  The problem is that I don't own a SIT-3. 

I do have a new preamp coming next week, a Cary SLP-05.  By far the most expensive preamp I've ever owned.  I have a First Watt M2x amp.  This is the DIY version of the M2.  I love it and think it will be fine with the Cary.  Still, being an audiophile I can't help but wonder about that SIT-3 even though the M2x is great.  I'm sure most of you know just what I mean.  Anyway, thanks for the responses.  This helped.

Measurements aren’t really helpful. Right. Listening and trying is. Right. The problem is there is no problem. Simply stop reading reviews and comments as if measurements matter, and start reading them as if listening impressions matter. Audio judo, use your opponents strength against him. Ignore the techno-babble, watch the listener comments.  

Everything you need to know is already out there. I never come around here asking anyone what to do next, or what they think of anything I am considering buying. Never done it. Never will. No point. All you get is some random answer from some random person who randomly happens to be reading and randomly feels like blathering something, which usually turns out to be based on no actual experience. 

All the experience and listening impressions you could ever need are already out there written up and ready to go. You just have to go and find them. What I have been doing for going on 15 years now. Works so good you can hardly believe it.