How important is the pre-amp?

The preamp IS the heart and soul of a system - it’s the driver in the car. The driver puts the car in gear, controls the steering and direction, and controls the throttle making the engine do what it needs to do to run the car. This is all the functions of a preamp in a sound system.
It drives the system! It has to accept and manage a wide array of sources; Turntable, CD and/or BluRay player, Streamer, Cable/Satellite Box, etc., allowing you to select between all of those sources, and has to control what the amplifier does with your speakers. It’s gain, balance, treble/bass, dynamics, it controls all of those things between the sources and the amp.
Without a good preamp, it would be a lot like putting a kid who just got their driver’s license behind the wheel of a race car. If you can’t manage the sources well, that’s like not knowing what gear to be in. If you can’t control what the amp is doing, it’s like not controlling the throttle, which you’re likely to blow the engine and burn the tires along with not being able to handle the steering. That’s much like not getting a good image between your speakers because you can’t control the balance and not being able to fully handle what the amp is doing to the speakers where it can sound distorted or likely blow your speakers. I hope that’s not confusing and gives you the direction you need?
Good luck in your quest!

I have a DAC and amp with balanced capability and the DAC has volume control.  My tube pre only has single ended connections. Sometimes I run the DAC strait to the AMP via balanced. I always recognize the music a little more analytical with the balanced connections. Then I switch back and put the pre in. I always seem to settle in on having the pre in the mix for longer periods before switching back to the DAC directly connected to the amp.   I am in agreement that Balanced is not always better than single ended. It's like wine , it depends on your taste.

Essential for getting the most out of the source. Don't fall for the story of using a DAC output alone. It is lifeless and unrealistic on every DAC I've tried this with. I know, digital is digital, blah blah, but something goes wrong without a quality preamp in the chain.

Do you believe it’s a point of tremendous debate that certain preamps color system sound? If so, that point of view would be surprising. One has only to look at twenty years of Audiogon preamp discussions to reach the conclusion that among many it’s not debatable, and in fact is a consideration when selecting a preamp.

@tvad

Nope- not debating that.

Or, do you rather believe it’s a point of tremendous debate that some folks like coloration that certain preamps provide?

Not debating that either.

I was talking about the endless debate between passive and active linestages.

I’m in the active camp because I can get the interconnect cables to drop out of the system equation and I can keep the distortion so low in the active linestage that coloration isn’t a thing. Not all active preamps can do that so coloration happens. Also, no passive or transformer system can do that either so you can expect coloration from them too.


To my knowledge you can either throw money at the interconnect cables in the hopes of minimizing coloration, or you can get something that was designed to minimize the coloration of cables. That latter problem was solved in the 1950s with the balanced line system (which is based on standard) but is mostly unused in high end audio. The latter part of the last statement is true because most high end audio companies either ignore the balanced standard or are ignorant of it; most high end balanced preamps I’ve seen don’t support it. The Backert is one of the few I’ve seen that does.

 

I am in agreement that Balanced is not always better than single ended. It's like wine , it depends on your taste.

Its not a matter of taste, its a matter of most high end products don't support the standard. If they did there would be no debate, no matter of 'taste' in this regard. IOW if you've heard a balanced setup but the standard isn't supported, you may hear colorations that cause you to prefer a single-ended setup you heard.