Running DCS Vivladi DIRECT?

Use a half dozen different DACs to drive an amplifier and you'll have 6 different sonic characters, they are not straight wire with gain.

Correct, why pile one on top of the other, just get the right one to start with..

I need to take in the DAC volume control and more importantly avoid the danger of over driving the speakers

And also just as important is not too start "bit stripping" if the volume is too low.
Also it would be interesting to find out if the ring dac chip in the Vivaldi is single ended output or balanced, if single ended then to make a xlr output they would need an extra opamp in the signal path, which would mean the se output should sound better. But if the ring dac chip is balanced then the the opostie will be true..

Cheers George

The preamplifier may have a superior analog output stage than the Vivaldi, who knows? Folkfreak's listening impressions will be interesting. 
Charles 

And wherein perhaps lies Solomon’s answer ... for if the dCS output is truly native SE then my experience that SE sounds better than balanced via a preamp (same cable, same length) then it could be the case that dCS->VTL balanced sounds worse than dCS->ARC (SE)->VTL (BAL) especially as the VTL itself is a balanced design ... so lets see

ps the Vivaldi has seperate output stages balanced and SE, and both can be driven at the same time, question is which is closer to the Ring DAC output ... which is ostensibly a balanced design but not clear what they have implemented in analog circuitry after the DAC -- clearly there’s quite a bit there at least to switch output levels and so on (btw interesting side note is that the BAL and SE output levels cannot be set independently ...)

I know the earlier Ring Dac chips were SE in output, in these the analog SE outputs after the chip sounded better, due to one less amplification stage in the signal path that wasn’t needed. (just like a preamp)

Cheers George

Folkfreak, ,
This is really shaping up into a very interesting listening evaluation. It is essentially a comparison of the quality and implementation of the  ARC REF  and DCS Vivaldi signal pathways.This is fun and informative. Time to put the ears to work😊.
Charles