Running DCS Vivladi DIRECT?

"Warmth not added but realized"
Terrific cursory summation David, spot on. I heard 2 hours of live unamplified piano 1 Week ago at a Steinway piano gallery recital. Wow, full bodied, rich, dense tone and harmonics, just beautiful! Much warmth and emotion. If active preamplifiers get one "closer" to this realism they’re doing something right regardless of what the measurements say. Sometimes you just have to get out and hear the real thing. I experience the same when I visit local jazz clubs.Warmth, body, dynamics and rich tones dominate these live settings.
Charles

Just to add to this discussion on space and warmth. I cited the example of the Nancy Harms track and the reverb. Via the direct connection it was clearly artificial reverb in a halo around the voice. The striking double bass was clear and direct but with no sense of body or presence in space.

However via the preamp the bass was palpably in its own space and had scale and heft, almost three dimensional, and the reverb on the vocal dropped back behind in space.

So ok maybe this was all studio trickery but via the preamp it sounded more like a group playing together in one space while direct it was just like a bunch of tracks on a mixer

Of course for recordings that were more honest like the jazz trio Bach the spatial cues and scale were all present via the preamp but much less distinct and appreciable in the direct connection

@folkfreak

Thank you so much for such a well written and understandable post on your listening experience. The Ref40 is one heck of a preamp for sure. My past experience with this sort of comparison yielded the exact same results although I never summarized it as wonderfully as you have here.

Also, thanks for the music references! Listening to Stacey Kent right now and love it.

Also like Nancy Harms.  I am really getting into Americana music since  moving to the Nashville area. Part of this includes folk.  Love for you to list some folk artists I should listen to.  

The Vivaldi volume control is digital one, you cannot switch it off or bypass it. Therefore no matter you connect the line preamplifier or not - you would always use its analog output section. If you find that preamplifier makes the Vivaldi sound better, this is because it introduces its own sound to the system usually by limiting high frequency, rolling off the spectrum above hearing capabilities.

The analog output section of Vivaldi seems to be top quality, I can hardly imagine it could be any better.

Any preamplifier would introduce something of its own to the sound, some may like it more and some may like it less. I can understand that introducing the preamplifier can make the sound more "digestible" is some systems, my advice is however to use Vivaldi direct to gain unlimited transparency, unless my must use preamplifier because of turntable or other analog source. If your sound is too bright or not so musical, search a weak part in your system that is responsible for that but this is not Vivaldi DAC, but rather a source component feeding it with the data or some digital jitter.

Changing cables may help a lot. I have found that putting some vibration control device under Vivaldi makes the sound much, much better. I would also recommend switching the Vivaldi buffer off, turn to 6V and use higher filter. I like the MAP 1 or MAP 3 better than MAP2. Also using power conditioner can help reducing a lot of "digital-like artifacts" from the sound helping to get more analog sound - check Shunyata Denali or Triton 3.