What is wrong here.. on Audiogon?

Maybe something with unity gain. I have a Dodd preamp (no longer made) with unity gain driving a Pass Labs Aleph J and it is much, much better than a Schiit Saga I used to have. There’s a thread on the Hornshoppe Truth preamp here and it has unity gain and can work with any source impedance and pretty much drive anything

George

So your saying, a PS Audio Gain Cell Dac or similar would be a good choice? How about a Schiit Saga?

Depends, what your source? and does it have a volume control?
Then you'll get hopefully informed opinions from others here as well.
Cheers George

I’d approach pairing a passive preamp or other unity gain preamp with the XA25 with caution, as its gain is somewhat on the low side (spec’d as 20 db; measured by Stereophile as 20.4 db). Stereophile measured the XA25 as being capable of supplying 80 watts into 8 ohms. It can be calculated that for an amp having a gain of 20.4 db to be driven to an output of 80 watts into 8 ohms an input of slightly more than 2.4 volts is necessary. Without a preamp supplying additional gain you won’t get there with the vinyl-based source you mentioned in the other thread, even with the volume control at max. And even with a digital source you would find yourself setting the volume control at or near max to drive the amp close to 80 watts, should that be necessary on the musical peaks of some recordings. That being especially likely to be an issue with recordings having wide dynamic range, such as many classical orchestral recordings.

On the other hand, though, with your Zu speakers you may never need the amp to supply anything close to 80 watts. But I would consider this issue carefully before proceeding down that path.

Regards,
-- Al

Thank you sir. Much appreciated. The gain for the LS3 is 18 with the ability to change it to 10 with a resistor and capacitor change. At this juncture, I'm kinda neutral on the Audio Research but I would like to have a remote control and my version of the LS3 doesn't have one.

You hijacked your own thread and are now getting more preamp advice.  Nicely done!