@vanson1 My Benchmark
HPA4 preamp improved the sound of my Benchmark DAC3 HGC. This DAC has a volume control for DAC direct to amp. The preamp improved on the DAC direct to amp on low level volume listening. I used to do a lot of that late at night when the baby was sleeping. You could hear all of the music at low volume with the preamp. Without the preamp there was music missing at the low volume. A rather frustrating listen.
I have another preamp that is very interesting for those that want a straight wire with gain. It is the Topping pre90 for about $700. Unfortunately it is incompatible with my current office amp but if it matched I would keep it and sell a 10x more expensive preamp. The only amp that I got it to match was the Benchmark AHB2 amp. However, other people have had more success than me matching amps to that preamp. So if you have a lot of sources, for relatively low cost, you can try this invisible preamp to see if a preamp makes a positive difference.
I have Room Correction via ROON Core Convolution files. No need for that in a preamp with a fixed and weak processor. So I have s computer to do the number crunching for DSP. I am not using DSP at the moment but it served me well in the past.
