Einstein The Tube users...help

all is needed here is a preamp with fine volume steps. Anything over 100 steps will give you a pretty good flexibility. As an aside, volume at 0 on some preamps does not mean volume off. You need to mute it. Such is the case with some ARC units. I had an LS-15 that was like that and now my LS-25 does that too. I wouldn't list it as an issue though. Once you get a preamp with nice volume control(if it has adjustable gain it is a plus) you will be fine.
Personally, I would avoid anything extra in the signal chain between preamp and amp, apart from your existing IC cable of course. No matter how tranparent they say it is.

Boa2, it has to do with gain as well, but if volume control allows for, say, 0.5db increments, this wouldn't be happening. BAT preamps have lots of steps in volume and will most likely be non-issue. So is the ARC Ref-3.

Tboooe, how many volume steps are there on "The Tube"?
What is the output gain of this preamp?
You may want to use this as a guideline for your future preamp. Compare these with ARC Ref-3 specs.

I drive my X250.5 with 22kohms balanced input impedance with my ARC LS-25 linestage that has 650ohms bal output impedance and 6db(low), 12db(med) and 18db(high) gain.
In medium gain setting which I use, there are no issues with volume.

My suspision is that the Einstein preamp has very limited volume steps and that is what the problem is, along with its relatively high gain of course, which is typical for any tube pre.

I had a tube preamp with 75 volume steps and had the same issue. Once I switched to a preamp with 104 steps, the problem is solved. A Sonic Frontiers preamp I tried in my system had 191 steps and it was the finest volume adjustment, despite its high gain.

My bet is that a preamp with a nice volume control will have no such control issues as too soft->too loud jump in volume.

BAT 51SE has 140 steps in 0.5db increments. Has 17db out gain, which is high, but with 140 steps there should absolutely be no problems with this unit driving the 22kohms amp. ARC REF-3, that has 11.6dB Balanced output gain(relatively low gain for a tube unit) with 104 steps of volum should be no problem either.

Boa2, I appologize if I sounded offensive.
Your posts were not argumentative at all. It is very informative to hear about how things integrate in someone else's system.

However, that quote from PS Audio does sound like BS, althouth you did say "take it for what its worth".
:)