Low volume listening dynamics

Assuming a good and proper impedance match, can a DAC direct to amp be another pice of the puzzle to get to good detailed lower vol listening?  

jriggy, in short no. Some people here on definitely on the right track. This is a moving target and there are many variables that are difficult to control. The most difficult one is the recording itself. Some records sound good at low levels others not. Systems that are boosted in the mid bass and treble for whatever reason are going to sound better at low levels. 
The variable that you want to be able to control is the frequency response of your system. The industry has know this for a long time. My father's HH Scott preamp from the 60's had tone controls and a loudness compensation switch. Then equalizes came along in the 70's but audiophiles were beginning to shun them because of the damage they did to imaging. In 2000 or so TACT audio came along with digital equalization and room control. Before TACT went out of business They evolved to the 2.2X which has Room control, Time alignment, bass management and dynamic loudness control. The loudness compensation changes with volume. The result is the system sounds the same at all volumes. The unit also allows you to design any response curve you can think of and load it into memory. You can switch back and forth between curves with the remote. This was an amazing education for me and would be for any audiophile. As long as everything is phase/time correct and early reflections are minimized you can make a system do anything except change imaging patterns created by the type of speaker used. You can't make a point source speaker sound like a line source. 
So, if you want more detail at low volumes you create a low volume curve with even more added bass below 100 Hz and more treble above 6000 Hz. The TACT 2.2x is the ultimate tweak. Current units that come close are the Anthem STR preamp and the Trinnov Amethyst. Unfortunately they have yet to include dynamic loudness control. Radomir Bozevic where are you when we need you! Radomir designed the Lyngdorf units. They were the bottom end of the TACT range. 

Please explain ISO 226 and I promise I'll try to understand...regarding my seeming "good fortune," are you referring to my ceiling or my furnishings? I do own an oil painting of some gigantic fruit in a road...

Your good fortune in all these things, Wolf. ISO 226 is the name of an official EU publication. 

At the risk of upsetting the true audiophiles......I have two separate solutions in different rooms for low volume listening.  In my office, I use the Adam F-5 active nearfield monitors, and their built-in adjustable treble and bass EQ setting to boost low end bass response and high end treble response.  In the family room (which is my main listening room), I use an Emotiva XMC-1 sound processor and have set up a dedicated EQ preset with individual frequency adjustments to optimize for low volume listening.  The older we get, the more 'help' we need to compensate for low volume listening.  In the past, I have liked only one "Loudness" feature, and that was on an old Yamaha receiver I had I college.  I don't like the Loudness feature on the XMC-1, but I do like the parametric equalizer that I can tune to my own flawed ears.  Good luck.