It‘s funny how people argue about this subject. Attenuation and amplification are fundamentally different and the simple fact of the matter is that dacs only require the former. So what may be useful in amplifying a phono signal with rare exemptions become distorition when a dac is used.
But one can also just use an amp as a buffer to change impedance.
If the DAC does the volume, and not other things need to be switched, then one does not need the attenuation nor the amp.
One of the rare exceptions is to drive the cables better to the amps, should the output be driven to very low listening levels. If the OP is not using horns and a high gain amplifier, and not listening at a low level, then they have less to consider.
But which arguments were you referring to?
