Are Preamplifier’s Relevant Today or just a Hinderance with Digital Playback ?

I had a Benchmark HPA4 preamp with a Gustard X26 Pro and the sound was fabulous. A killer pairing.

Then a few weeks ago, I moved the HPA4 to another room and had the Gustard DAC direct to amp. The music sounds a bit more lean. I also have a few semi loud pops on the speaker and also varying amounts of hiss. Turning the Gustard OFF and then ON again reset the hiss to a lower level. This did not give me me confidence on the DAC direct to amp.

Today I put in a CODA 07x preamp with Gustard. Great sound again with more body to the sound. Different from the HPA4 preamp but both are way better than DAC direct to amp on my setup, especially so at low volume. I am listening at low volume while my son goes to sleep in the next room and everything is there in the music, just at a lower volume. A digital volume cannot do low volume well, parts of the music go missing.

@oldschool1948 Try incorporating Fibre Optical cable to your streaming. It will make a world of difference. I use the Sonore Optical Rendu’s. Analog noise cannot travel inside Fibre Optical cable. A great equalizer in my opinion to cheaply getting noiseless streams into the DAC.

@oldschool1948 Your Innuos is likely helping out a lot in the streaming quality department. In my case, I do not do anything to improve my streaming pipeline until the Fibre cable then USB to DAC. So for me the difference was huge. So much so that I bought 2 OpticalRendu's for each of my DAC's.