Analogue clipping from digital sources

In my read a good DAC analogue stage may only need an additional preamp where switching to analogue sources is required. Absent that the pre adds distortion.

thank you to @atmasphere and @erik_squires for explaining an obviously important issue that hasn’t been sufficiently discussed

but phono stages have additional gain just for them.  It's true that you almost don't need any gain for CD's, but tape decks and tuners were often near that, no? 

@erik_squires No. quite often a tuner or phono section will make 1Volt. A cassette machine makes 1 Volt (@ 0VU), as do consumer (not pro) reel to reels (also @ 0VU).

OP: 

With modern amps, input impedance is usually quite high, 25kOhms or more, and plenty of voltage gain, so with many combinations of modern DAC's and solid state amps a separate preamp is no longer technically needed.

Best,

E

I guess what it boils down to is that in 2024, if you tell me your recent vintage preamp is clipping with 2V of input I am going to have trouble believing it is not malfunctioning.

Are you referring to clipping?  I think it has been mathematically demonstrated that it is possible for PCM to clip during playback even though never detected during encoding...