Is there any Streamer/DAC/Preamp good enough to replace a dedicated standalone preamp?

Op we sell many high end dacs and streamers and you are going to have a hard time duplicating the Cj sound. 

A Briscati, Mytek or Lumin are all excellent products but will also sound cleaner and less euphonic then the Act so it all comes down to what you are trying to create.

What is the rest of your system and budget?

Dave and Troy
Audlo Doctor NJ

Phomchick, you are under a couple of false assumptions.

1: A straight line with gain is desirable

Answer: Sometimes no it isn't.

If the dac with volume control makes the system sound sterile and going through a good tube preamp adds some warmth that makes the sound much more enjoyable how is the straight wire with gain that makes you not want to listen to the system a bad thing? Sometimes adding the right colorations are a good thing.

2: The dac may not have a real preamp stage, sometimes you get a decent digial attenuator that does bit restriction to change volume, others use a digital volume control which is discrete resitors on a chip, while others use a potentiometer, while others could use switched resistors with realys to open and close the resistors.

So unless the "volume" control is really good that dac/preamp may actually alter the sound going through it via the volume control.

3: Many dac/preamp aren't real preamplifiers but are just the output stage of the dac with a volume control and therefore may have difficulties driving an amplfier or longer cable runs optimally.

Dave and Troy
Audio Doctor NJ