As Tomcy6 suggested , I did contact Upscale Audio and asked them about the 'unity gain' circuit situation . I will post their reply here , but first a word . I am doing this for future reference to anyone also wishing to know , and reads this thread in their search for an answer .
Please , to all who have contributed here , I do not wish you to have any bad feelings or remorse . So please don't feel slighted or think that I am ungrateful for your helpful contributions .
With that said here is their answer...
"The HT input does not remove the integrated’s gainstage from the signal path. It sets to unity gain and defeats the potentiometer, but the gainstage is still in the signal path. The only real reason to use an external preamp is if it is a home theater processor/receiver and you want to integrate your two-channel and multi-channel systems.
Using just a standard two channel preamp won’t give you any meaningful performance gains, unless you are looking to use a significantly better preamp than the one built into the integrated. At that budget, honestly that would be a step sideways at best. At worst, it really would only serve to add another piece of gear where noise or ground loops can be introduced."
The budget that I used was $1,000 for a used preamp .
Again many thanks to all of you that contributed to this thread .
Happy Tunes
