Budget preamp with quality volume control

If u have gain issues do not touch the topping pre90. It ONLY worked for me with amps that had gain adjustments, such as the Benchmark AHB2 and the Parasound A21+. It was terrible with about another 5 amps I used it with.

The Sxhitt Freya+ has a lot of features and sounds OK,, but does colour the sound.

The Schitt Sys maybe something that woks for you. It only supports RCA.

You can always bite the bullet and get what I think is an amazing preamp and any price, the Benchmark LA4.

Music First Audio was an early adopter of the transformer volume control, or TVC.  I believe they use S&B transformers.  Transformers use two coils around a core and offer isolation while autotransformers, or autoformers, use only one coil and do not isolate but do apparently have a few advantages when used as volume controls.

Autoformers allow for the same voltage/current transformations that typical transformers are used for and have increased power handling capability, flatter frequency response, lower insertion loss and lower distortion than conventional transformers of similar size and cost.

I do like the Apple remote functionality with the icOn 4PRO.  I also like the large display that is so easy to see across the room.  Functionally, it offers everything I want in a preamp, including an HT pass-through.  I have not tried Music First or any of the other transformer VCs, so cannot make a comparison between autoformers and transformers in my system.

Music First Audio is a subsidiary of Stevens & Billington which is why their products use those transformers in their design. When S&B used to let people use the transformers for DIY and OEM John Chapman at Bent Audio built a very nice passive preamp with them and when S&B pulled the plug on DIY and OEM he switched to the Slagle autoformers and developed his own module with relays. If you can find one of his preamps used it would be worth trying out.

I have and have had many passive preamps over time that used quality attenuation controls. Everything from a simple pot in the box using NOS Noble potentiometers to Khozmo, Slagle AVC, and S&B TVC passives (all of which I DIYed and all had dual mono attenuation). While all of them performed well for me, the best bang for the buck in my opinion is the one I didn’t DIY which is the Lightspeed Attenuator.

See if you can find an Ayre K1xemp ( its old but fabulous....)