Holo Audio May DAC

I sold my DSD a few weeks back for $3k and it sold in just a few hours.

great - thanks for the info

That video on the Holo May was great. The best example of objective and subjective evaluation I've seen. It's was troubling to see on his part 2 video that he mentions that the Denafrips Ares II does not do real NOS but "linear interpolation" instead (if I remember it correctly). Makes me wonder if all of Denafrips line up do that instead of actual NOS. 

All the best,
Nonoise

I'm still months away from a new DAC, and now the May has moved into my sights which were previously fixed on the Wavelight. In my system I have no preamp (just feed my current dac with volume control direct to my Hegel amp) so one thing that attracted me to the Wavelight, besides the organic/analog sound-quality accolades, was the fully analog volume control that was also well-praised. If it had the May I'd need to get a preamp (and another set of XLR cables).

So with that in mind... is there an affordable preamp or "analog volume attenuator" that is affordable? It would seem that in its most pure sense all I'm really after is a way to attenuate the sound without degrading the quality (i.e. what's basically happening with the volume control of the wavelight)... any such device? Or is an audiophile stuck having to buy a $$ preamp to basically serve that purpose? Any input appreciated :)

i have the wavelight and the may kte.

the may kte is an excellent dac, but I am preferring the wavelight by a small margin. and yes, the wavelight preamp is very very good.