Best Preamp = No Preamp?


I'm currently looking for some DACs. I'm looking at Benchmark DAC1, Bel Canto DAC3, Slim Devices Transporter, etc...

I noticed most of these newest high performance DACs have built in volume control with remote.

I'm thinking that I can connect these DACs directly to my Power Amp skipping preamp.

Is that right thinking? Why go through additional peice of device when I can avoid? Anybody doing it that way?

What'll be the pros and cons?

eandylee
getting a cd-player, or Dac with very good type tubes and running direct to amplification has no hardness, edginess, quite the opposite, organic, way more transparent than most active pre-amps, and with full bass slam and tube magic mid-range if you get a hybred tube/solid state source with specs of below 20hz to 20khz and a little more, mated with good cabling, you will get incredible results with a high quality solid state amp that is high power and high current, this is my system now, Happy listening.
I went w/o a preamp and thought it sounded good but when I added a jeff rowland criterion, I discovered the error of my ways. I am firmly in the camp that the preamp is the key to the whole presentation.
Direct sounds thinner with less body, weight and texture. This had been my experience with trying the LSA Attenuator three times, Placette, several DAC's direct, and several CD players direct. To some it sounds cleaner or more resolving, but I feel this is either mistaken for "transparency" or some folks like that lighter than real sound. Ha! I know that sounds negative, but we do all have preferences.

To each his or her own. Just enjoy!
Most SS sources (excluding tube ones) have an output stages that can equal and sometimes better many preamp output stages, especially tube ones.
So the myth that a preamp can drive the interconnects to the amp better is a "furphy", and started by preamp manufactures, and "Ohms Law" will prove that time and time again.
The only time you may like a preamp in the way is if you prefer it's colouration it gives, at a cost of transparency.

Just remember the Nelson Pass quote:
"We’ve got lots of gain in our electronics. More gain than some of us need or want. At least 10 db more.
Think of it this way: If you are running your volume control down around 9 o’clock, you are actually throwing away signal level so that a subsequent gain stage can make it back up.
Routinely DIYers opt to make themselves a “passive preamp” - just an input selector and a volume control.
What could be better? Hardly any noise or distortion added by these simple passive parts. No feedback, no worrying about what type of capacitors – just musical perfection.
And yet there are guys out there who don’t care for the result. “It sucks the life out of the music”, is a commonly heard refrain (really - I’m being serious here!). Maybe they are reacting psychologically to the need to turn the volume control up compared to an active preamp."

Cheers George