DAC with Volume Control and Audio Research Ref 5SE

I have been a firm believer in taking out the preamp in an all digital source system, whenever possible, and using either analog or digital VC on the DAC.

This was based on the idea that a preamp is always "subtractive", i.e. it can only degrade the downstream signal through insertion of circuitry, and anything it adds to the signal is an distorting artefact. The philosophy was confirmed with a number of very decents preamps (Modwright 36.5 LS/PS, EMM Labs Switchman, Pass Lab xp-10), none of which improved on the (digital) VC in the DAC.

Enter the Audio Research Ref 5SE. This preamp breaths a level of dynamics into the sound of my DAC (MSB Signature DAC IV) relative to using its internal analog volume control, improves soundstage and timbre that must be heard to believe. Artifacts? May be. Pleasant distortion (tubes!)? Possible. Do I care? Not one bit! It sounds just too damn good.

So my filosophy and theory are out the door based on a new empircally based data point. I Still believe you need to get into the preamp stratosphere to get this result, but if you do, the outboard analog volume control still lives.

I suspect one of the reasons for this finding is the Ref5SE has just improved price performance in tube preamps by 70%, and made a $20K+ performance accesible for $13K. I would not have never tried this with a $25K preamp, but getting a fairly prices trade-in Ref 5SE brought doing the expiriment within the realm of almost realistic economics.

Conclusion: The preamp is dead, long live the preamp!