Well... you have made decisions which, imo, make it more difficult to achieve superior sound. By insisting upon using volume control in sources, i.e. CDP, you are locking yourself out of potentially far superior systems. You may have had success in using CDP as source and preamp function, but I found in many iterations with very fine CDP's that one can obtain far better sound by doing two things; use the CDP as transport and get an outboard DAC, and use a passive or active preamp with it. You are in no way assured to have superior sound simply because you are using the volume control of the CDP and the CDP's DAC.
You may lose a touch of the most extreme refinement/cleanness going this route, but you will have an overall far higher end result in terms of most other parameters of fine playback. Trying to futz with amps is not a good solution, imo, and you will still have a largely compromised (not fully realized) system. :)
You may lose a touch of the most extreme refinement/cleanness going this route, but you will have an overall far higher end result in terms of most other parameters of fine playback. Trying to futz with amps is not a good solution, imo, and you will still have a largely compromised (not fully realized) system. :)