Preamp - what's the purpose?

@r27y8u92 

Yes, this is basically my attitude about it...

raw fish with NO cooking = ultimate purity. 🍣

A Primaluna EVO 400 pre-amp feeding into the AGD Audion Mk3 is the best of both worlds. Granted, many customers have probably embraced GanFET amps with the idea that this would do away with some of the inconveniences of tubes and yet still sound like tubes. That is partially true but not true enough. With the tube pre in the chain it is finally enough.

The pre-amp warms up faster, creates less heat and does not contain so many tubes to keep track of. This works fine for me.

I run my AGD Audions from Cary SLP 05 and am also very happy.  

I liken my pre-amp to SS amp set-up as being something that burnishes the sound without any hint of foaminess that was the case when I was using pre and power tube amps simultaneously. I am, however, keeping the power tube amp and setting it up separately as a SS pre to tube power amp which can have its own hybrid sound advantages.

either is ok, modified sound with pre or pure sound with no pre.

once you feel pure taste with no sauce, you will remove the preamp!

@r27y8u92 I have LPs and CDs I recorded. I find that using a preamp gets me more neutral sound as the preamp is able to eliminate the coloration caused by the interconnect cables- if you've ever auditioned interconnect cables and heard a difference, you know what I mean.

I've also found that quite often if a passive control is used, when turned down from anywhere other than all the way up there is a loss of impact across the audio band- usually most noticeable in the bass. This is caused by the passive control being in series with the output impedance of the source (which might be a DAC). Active preamps do not have this problem.