Best Preamp = No Preamp?

George, did you know our preamp can drive 32 ohm headphones directly? My speakers at home are 16 ohms and it can drive them too. Yet it is a tube preamp. The line stage is a miniature power amplifier. It has a low output impedance that is the same at 10Hz as it is at 1000Hz. It is this low output impedance that allows it to control interconnect cable artifact, and is why it is more transparent than passive controls.

During the golden age of stereo which occurred from about 1958 about 1963, many of the best jazz and classical recordings were made. Yet at that time, there were no high end audio cables made; there was no high end cable industry at all until Robert Fulton offered his first cables in 1977. Yet these recordings are amazingly transparent. This despite the fact that the interconnect cables were often over 200 feet long! It was the design of the tube electronics involved in the recordings that prevented the cables from imposing artifact.

Such would have been impossible with a passive volume control.

Just to add a different perspective, if I am not mistaken the 600 ohm standard was originated by the telephone industry (good old Ma Bell) back in the day and adopted by the professional audio industry. Seems the phone company knew the benefit of this as it applied to long cable runs as well.

I'll say it again,
Most solid state sources these days have very low impedance output stage buffers that can drive anything, and are as good if not better than many preamps and without the colouration, especially tube preamp.
A preamp that can drive 32ohms, that does not make it a necessity to have in the signal path, keep it as a headphone amp. As most solid state sources will drive anything they see today.

Cheers George

A lot of the best recordings made in the "golden age" were so in large part to good engineers using better recording techniques with little concern about dumbing down the sound to the lowest commercial denominator.

The golden age was late fifties right after high fidelity stereo debuted and was a brand new big deal. Like most things it's mostly taken for granted these days. When is the last time anyone ever referred to high fidelity sound? Oh yeah now it's high end and uber expensive. Fact is most audio people listen to today is quite hifi at various price points whereas it took something really special to make it happen with the technology available to consumers in those ancient times.