The Best Preamp is no Preamp?

 There is no substitute for listening.  Sometimes yes, sometimes no.  Depends on your equipment and the ease of controlling volume, plus whatever moderating effect (or exacerbating effect) you preamp adds.  They will add something.

I have a second system that sounds almost as good as my first and actuall use more (its in my den).  I have an old Pioneer (with transport) feeding a Bel Canto DAC, a Dynaco FM-3 tuner, and an Audionics preamp (handling my phono cartridge)  and each is blessed with individual volume controls.  So they each go into a Zektor solenoid operated switch which in turn feeds the power amp.  Through Thiel 2.2's the system sounds superb.  Meanwhile, my main system feeds through my Audio Research SP-6 which also sounds superb.  You've got to try it to make the decision.

In practice, long speaker cables often cause a loss of bass impact and intelligibility of vocals. This is easily measured and demonstrated.

I agree with the above statement!

My speaker cables are < 1 foot.

Tortuga Audio....Try one

Tried no preamp for a while. Really liked it for a minute. Bass was good, treble was pretty good. When things got fast it was all together with no definition. I spent about a month on it then moved back. Like it was running out of gas.

I used to avoid a preamp for a long time. A friend told me to try his parasound pld/2000 and I could not believe, how much more detail and body it gave to the music. Now I replaced the parasound with a Hegel Pre and I cannot believe it can be any better. Give it a try and you will hear the positive abilities of a preamp.