You can’t please everyone, or optimize a component for every possible system. It’s perhaps not so much a matter of "hifi loudness wars" as it is "analog vs digital wars". DACs can have very high line output levels, up to 4V is not atypical for a balanced DAC’s XLR outputs. Compare this to a typical "audiophile" analog setup with a 0.5mV MC cartridge into a phono stage with 60dB of gain, netting 0.5V line output. That’s 18dB lower than the 4V DAC! That’s not just a huge difference - that’s a world apart. I believe those with tape decks can have similar issues.
Preamps in particular - analog audiophiles often find usefulness in high-gain preamps with up to 20dB or more (!!) of gain. That same gain level will be quite ludicrous when hooked up to a digital source. That’s when you get guys saying "I can’t go past 9:00 on volume before it’s blasting me out of the room".
Then beyond the preamp/source stage you have to match between sensitivity of your amps vs. speakers. So a worst case scenario of bad gain structure system building "it’s too loud as soon as I move the volume at all" would look like this:
* Balanced XLR DAC 4V
* Tube preamp 23dB gain
* High sensitivity high power amp 30dB gain (high power PP tube amps typically have the highest gains)
* High sensitivity speakers - upper 90s dB/Watt
The panacea is to learn gain structure and how to build a system that correctly meets your needs. So e.g. if you want to run both a low-output MC cartridge and a digital source, you’re more likely going to want heaps of gain in your phono stage (70dB or so), and a preamp with a modest 8dB - 14dB gain (or even lower).
Honestly, even as an analog guy I find preamps with 20+ dB of gain to be too much (though I do have very sensitive speakers downstream). You inevitably start hearing the noise floor from all that gain (again, on sensitive speakers and amps). And there’s still a surprising number of tube preamps with this amount of gain. I think this comes from the days when CJ and ARC would make "full function" preamps with an MM phono stage that *could* also run lower output MC cartridges by tapping into that surplus of line stage gain. But it was a bad match when the owner hooked up a digital source. Also this may come from the ubiquity of 12ax7 tubes & circuits. If you see a tube preamp with 12ax7 tubes in it - you KNOW it’s gonna have an absurd amount of gain.
Preamps in particular - analog audiophiles often find usefulness in high-gain preamps with up to 20dB or more (!!) of gain. That same gain level will be quite ludicrous when hooked up to a digital source. That’s when you get guys saying "I can’t go past 9:00 on volume before it’s blasting me out of the room".
Then beyond the preamp/source stage you have to match between sensitivity of your amps vs. speakers. So a worst case scenario of bad gain structure system building "it’s too loud as soon as I move the volume at all" would look like this:
* Balanced XLR DAC 4V
* Tube preamp 23dB gain
* High sensitivity high power amp 30dB gain (high power PP tube amps typically have the highest gains)
* High sensitivity speakers - upper 90s dB/Watt
The panacea is to learn gain structure and how to build a system that correctly meets your needs. So e.g. if you want to run both a low-output MC cartridge and a digital source, you’re more likely going to want heaps of gain in your phono stage (70dB or so), and a preamp with a modest 8dB - 14dB gain (or even lower).
Honestly, even as an analog guy I find preamps with 20+ dB of gain to be too much (though I do have very sensitive speakers downstream). You inevitably start hearing the noise floor from all that gain (again, on sensitive speakers and amps). And there’s still a surprising number of tube preamps with this amount of gain. I think this comes from the days when CJ and ARC would make "full function" preamps with an MM phono stage that *could* also run lower output MC cartridges by tapping into that surplus of line stage gain. But it was a bad match when the owner hooked up a digital source. Also this may come from the ubiquity of 12ax7 tubes & circuits. If you see a tube preamp with 12ax7 tubes in it - you KNOW it’s gonna have an absurd amount of gain.