DAC DIRECT IN TO AMPLIFIER OR TO PREAMPLIFIER

@carlsbad2 + 1 

I do it another way:  I am good at buying and selling used equipment.  The key is never to buy junk.  So I buy a lot of equipment and resell the equipment that doesn't suit me. 

Mahgister- "you don't know what you don't  know". In this case, this doesn’t have anything to do with system synergy, IMO it has everything to do with the quality of the dac and the preamp.

A lot of dacs are noisy when using as a preamp so a preamp is a requirement. Some dacs like mine have attenuation to compensate if there is any noise going directly to the amp. 
 

Before ps audio came out with their BHK preamp, Paul’s recommendation was to go directly to the amp from their dac. I had a new $5000 preamp a few years ago that I used with my dac, and other sources. I took the preamp out and went directly to the amp, played with attenuation, and the sound quality was the same, so I sold the preamp. The BHK preamp might be better than the preamp I had, but when looking into making the dac sound best, most of the conversations I saw was to get the dac to perform best in its sweet zone, and this involved using or not using the attenuation feature. For example, some people claimed the sound with attenuation on sounded more smooth, while others claimed it was lifeless. Same goes for attenuation off. 
 

Let your ears determine what sounds best after you run thru the many different configurations.

We can have words and concepts learned by minimal acoustic experiments in our room..

Then we "dont know what we dont know" but we can guess it by listening our speakers/room ...

There must be a balance between all acoustic factors for exemple for a brass orchestra timbre of trumpets ,french cor , tuba, trombone, to be experienced rightfully with clear distict timbre tone playing in a spatial clear distibutions and transients and dynamic and the "rise-duration-decay time " and all the spatial distribution and extent qualities in 3-D...And we must learn how to control these acoustics factors in our room...

Then " i dont know what i dont know " it is true but i did not have so much ignorance as 12 years ago when i did not understood and perceived yet the contribution of each acoustic concepts ... But i learned them by experiments and how to control in some degree and act on them for better and worse...

then you are right :

Let your ears determine what sounds best after you run thru the many different configurations.

But i know even if i never listen to it yet what could be my best upgrade and why and how...there is a minimal acoustic satisfaction threshold and i reach it at low cost and i am more than happy... It takes lot of hard work and years of experimenting to reach it... Most people dont do that...They then catch upgraditis...And they, in an opposite way to me, suggest branded name of gear they own for upgrade not acoustic and electrical and mechanical embeddings as more fundamentals with the necessary gear synergy as i do ...

For sure we must learn and buy and make mistakes... I did for years ... But my point is that we will makes more mistakes and create more unsatisfaction if we dont learn basic embeddings controls... Acoustics being the most important... Dac upgrade is half the time unnecassary.. People do it because they dont know how to reach synergy and they dont learn any acoustics concepts by EXPERIMENTING...

I say that because i did exactly this BEFORE experimenting and learning...

My post made sense ONLY for people with a limited budget and people who cannot afford to buy illimited dac pieces or gear pieces to try them... Experimenting may cost nothing, but it cost much in time and in reading, this is why few did it...This does not change the fact i spoke about :  audio is about synergy and especially embeddings controls not about costlier piece of gear... 😊

Interesting approaches to digital level control.    Great to see innovation. Looks like these ideas could be very inexpensive and trickle down to commodity products. 

So the correct answer remains: it depends. 

I have a Mola Mola Tambaqui DAC and A Mola Mola Makua preamp. I conferred with the master US importer to confirm my long held belief and he did not equivocate AT ALL. It is ALWAYS better to have a qualify preamplflier in the chain. Always. I have never NOT used a preamplifier with my other DACS.