Pass Labs XA25 without preamp (from a variable output source) vs INT25

@avanti1960 Have you tried to drive the XA25 directly bypassing the Cary in yor system? I´d love to hear your comments if you try it. BTW I owned a SLP98 many years ago driving Cary 300SE monoblocks. Nice preamp but with awful sounding signal caps inside (oil1 caps). I replaced them with Hovland Musicaos and the sound improved tremendously in every possible area (transparency, detail, timbre, soundstage, bass control, etc)

Thanks!

UPDATE: Ok, I listened for about an hour. I think the preamp is needed. (Mine is in the shop.) Why? The dimensionality of the soundstage is much reduced and there is a raw quality to some of the recordings where before there was a smoother and more liquid quality.

In short: I retract my earlier claim that it sounds good. With my relatively inexpensive streamer (but nice DAC), I still want my tube preamp back.

Also, it couldn't play above about 78 db.

@chorus Thanks for sharing your experiences. 🙂 When you replaced your XA-25 for the INT25 you say you didn´t notice a SQ improvement but, did you feel you loosed "something" with that move? Which speaker do you have?

Thanks!

@hilde45 Thanks for the update! Much appreciated!

Just noe more question. Did you use the same DAC when using the XA25 with and without the preamp?

BTW it´s not a surprise you only get 78dB cause XA25 has only 20dB of gain so if droven directly by a source and without a preamp that source must be one with more than the 2V CD standard voltage.

Thanks again!

@joegt Yes, same DAC. 

My setup is BlueSound Node 2i --> Orchid DAC --> XA25

Honestly, I *wanted* to like it. I hoped I had found a magical way to cut out the preamp. Here's what a friend said about my experiment:

"you lose some layering not going through a tube amp. I’d expect it to be a tad more grainy, less depth, and not as smooth....An active preamp is one of THE most important components ina lower efficiency system. Using a Node’s preamp section and volume control is gonna be limiting. An XA-25 would reveal all limitations of a directly connected source like (the preamp section) of a Node2i."