Running DCS Vivladi DIRECT?

By the way the OP ask for "comparisons and to elucidate the differences. This is what folkfreak did in fact do.

Well don’t jump on Johndoe’s case for doing just that, forest and trees.

You aren’t experiencing straight wire with gain.

No it’s straight wire with NO gain, even better as there's no gain circuit.

my listening levels for the tracks were between 9.5dB and 14dB cut on the DAC

I'd try the 0.2V output setting on the Vivaldi if you attenuated between 9.5dB and 14dB; this way you'd be able to run the volume control to max, with no more than 5dB of attenuation.

Fair point @seigen but the other consideration is level matching with my phono stage. With the current settings the two need the same rough preamp volume settings and so avoid the danger of playing too loud. 

Gain matching across the entire amplification cascade is an interesting topic and one I’ve previously commented on (albeit in the context of phono)

Why do you need to match the output level between your DAC and phono stage? I mean, are you doing on the fly changes between inputs on the preamp while listening simultaneously to your TT and DAC? In that case the Vivaldi would be quieter than your phono stage at the same volume level on the preamp.

The 0.2V setting on the Vivaldi might sound better when run direct into the amps since you'd hardly get to use the volume control at all, keeping it mostly at max.

Why match? To avoid having to remember to add or cut 20-30 steps on the volume control or risk playing way too loud. As it stands the two inputs use the same range which is what I want. Also we want to avoid at all costs using any gain at all in the pre-amp and reducing to 0.2V would mean needing to use almost the full gain stage (12dB) to get 0.7V rated output (not that I of course drive the amps that high but peaks may) while 600mV is much closer to the desired 0.7B output sans gain ... make sense?

In other words the volume control setting and cuts I describe represent the average, the peaks may be close to unity