if your tying to match gains for some reason why? do you feel the volume control should be at the same place for both ? is that something that bothers you? id not worry about the difference in gain ( unless you have way too much or too little) just turn up or down your volume control for the source your using.
also DAC volume controls are iffy at best as many are doing that in the digital domain and that's not good for sound quality, unless its NOT truncating bits to do the volume.
Tubes add a small amount of noise to the system if the DAC's tube stage is not optimized it can be the source of the noise.
DAC's will almost always output a stronger signal then a phono stage.