Won't preamps become obsolete?

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.

Further to my comments regarding volume control and transformer volume control (TVC). I like to add that I have the same TVC as in the Bent Audio passive box, but as built-in in my tubed phono stage, custom made by Kevin Carter of K&K Audio. I don't have a linestage. In my phono stage, I have a set of output for vinyl and another set for CD. The output for CDP goes directly to the TVC, so it's like a passive linestage without gain. Eventhough I don't listen to CD, I have this CD output just in case I get a CDP later. I have tried a CDP in this set up, it has more than enough gain. Most CDP have output of 2 volts. For my phono stage, it has 65dB gain, my cartridge is the Koetsu Rosewood Signiture with 0.6 dB and I have more than enough gain. Let me tell you, the dynamics is unbelievable with TVC. Standard volume control is resistor based, which suppresses high frequencies, bass and dynamics, TVC dosen't do that at all. I have numerous phono stages in the last 20 years and this is the best of them all.