Won't preamps become obsolete?


I'm in the market for a new preamp because I want to upgrade from my Conrad Johnson PV10A. I listen mostly to vinyl but some CD and hopefully SACD some day so I need a preamp to integrate sources. As I look at the used preamp ads on A'gon, however, I notice more and more people saying that they are selling their preamp because they are going directly from a cd player with volume control into an amp. As vinyl wanes (never with me!) will the preamp follow suit or become more oriented towards integrating home theatre digital video and audio sources?
128x128jyprez
Most volume controls in amps and CDP are of low quality volume control which really restrict dynamics and sound quality. If you are thinking going direct from source to amp, you need a very high quality volume control. I listen to vinyl only and I have a phono stage with a pair of transformer volume control (TVC) which is arguably the best kind of volume control. Some audiophiles use TVC in a passive box for their CDP. Most CDPs have digital volume control, which is the worst thing you can have. In any preamp, whether it's active or passive, volume control is extremely critcal, it could act as the bottle-neck for the whole system. TVC is expensive, but is really worth the money considering it control the sound level of your system, which could be many times the money of your volume control.
If we look onto many amps made today,
They already have a neccessary preamplification especially ones with differential input stages.
To have a few dB larger sencitivity may have an extra pre-drive stage.
In reality it's piece of cake to make from power amp an integrated one and build the volume controll after the drive or pre-drive stage so the issue with impedance matching will go away for good.
The minimalistic line preamps suchas McCormack TLC, RLD or Micro Line Drive will not become obsolete as they're just buffers with unity gain and extra inputs with input selector. To have integrated monoblocks is not so convenient anyway. They provide the minimal path for the signal interface.
I don't think so. Even when the technology gets to the point that power supplies are quiet enough so they don't require isolation in seperate boxes,I suspect preamps will endure because of the gadget aspect of another neat looking box on the rack and the commissions to the persons who sell them.
I have gone this route and in the end a good Preamp is the way to go.

No they will never go away.

And Viynl is comming back huge.
Why is it that each and everytime I bypass the preamplifier the sound becomes thin and sterile. It is true that there seems less "garbage" in the sound (less noise, less distortion), but there is also loss of bloom and spaciousness, which to me are very important omissions.