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Is there any reason I should buy a standalone preamp instead of a streamer/DAC/preamp?

mtaz

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Jun 27, 2024
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I recently bought a Purifi 1ET400A amp. I had initially borrowed my Drop THX AAA One headphone amp from my upstairs office where I do my headphone listening, since it can double as a line preamp. This worked fine; however, I really wanted to continue using the headphone amp upstairs, so I decided to try using my Schiit A/B switch as a simple volume control instead. Fortunately, the amp had plenty of gain at the default setting to drive my Ascend Sierra-LX speakers to quite satisfying levels with no preamplification. I'm currently using a CD player as the source for the amp.

I'm planning to add at least one subwoofer, and possibly a DSP. I will probably either add, or replace the CD player with, a different digital source... either a mini-pc running JRiver to a standalone DAC, which is the configuration for the headphones - or, and here's where I'm not sure how I should proceed, a combined streamer/DAC/preamp, like an Eversolo.

The Eversolo would give me more convenience, but for significantly higher cost... I'm still undecided on this. I guess the piece of information that I think I still need is: would there be any real advantage to having a dedicated preamp instead of the Eversolo, either in terms of sound quality (seems unlikely to me) or configuration flexibility, particularly with the sub(s)? Or is there something else I should be considering?
 
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