You DAC could be a high output (more than 2volts) and could be overdriving your Preamp (especially if you have a tube preamp). Check the input volt specs on your preamp and contact the DAC vendor to see what the output is...
digital output crackling
I've just purchased on Audiogon, a magnan digital coaxial cable to run from my cd player to a dac. When I connected last night, the signal was "crackling" I took the cable to work today, and hooked up a cd player into an audio board and the sound was fine. Could a cable sound right with analog to analog, but not into a dac? Doesn't seem right to me. The input on the dac is analog as well. Could it be that I did not have the rca's connected fully? Any thoughts would be apprecieated