How to turn on Unity Gain on Pre Amp

If a system is passive friendly, i.e. high efficiency speakers, high input impedance amp, robust source output, there’s really not many preamps that can beat no preamp.

I respectfully disagree. If it works out that way, fine. But many, many audiophiles find value in incorporating a quality preamp. I’d encourage @atmasphere to chime in here because, well, he’s a damn icon in this industry and a voice of reason here. IME, preamps are more consequential than amps, but yours is not my system or  my listening experience. My only message from personal experience, do NOT minimize the impact of the preamp on the ultimate sound of your system. FWIW.

I am only streaming so the preamp really only serves as a sound conditioner and volume control. I am a Mac fan and have auditioned other brands and settled on Mac. I do believe in my case that less is more vs some other preamp option. I wouldn't be surprised if some ultra-expensive preamp performed better than c2500 but I have no interest in going down that road. It sounded great with the c2500 and now seemingly better direct from the S1. Further listing tests on that is yet to be done.

While I don't have any experience with uber expensive preamps, I've had a few well respected ones. Here is one example.

I had in house three very good active preamps and one passive. CJ Premier 17LS, Art Audio VPL, Lamm LL2. The passive was a Sonic Euphoria autoformer preamp. To my ears the SE beat all three in every aspect in my system.

I have owned many transformer, autoformer, light dependent resistor, and resistor based passives. Many of these were better than preamps costing several time their retail price.

@soix you are right, to each his own.

OK I feel like a bit of an idiot..  just goes to show in the hi-fi world psychosomatic pre-expectations can be real.. I put the preamp back and it sounds every bit as good maybe even better than without.. crazy, I know i was convinced that it was better without it when I first took it out. i do have the leedh volume turned on but experimenting with the unity game at 70% on the preamp and going back-and-forth using the preamps volume not hearing much a difference either but the leedh is on the entire time which I think is a good thing.