either is ok, modified sound with pre or pure sound with no pre.
once you feel pure taste with no sauce, you will remove the preamp!
@r27y8u92 I have LPs and CDs I recorded. I find that using a preamp gets me more neutral sound as the preamp is able to eliminate the coloration caused by the interconnect cables- if you've ever auditioned interconnect cables and heard a difference, you know what I mean.
I've also found that quite often if a passive control is used, when turned down from anywhere other than all the way up there is a loss of impact across the audio band- usually most noticeable in the bass. This is caused by the passive control being in series with the output impedance of the source (which might be a DAC). Active preamps do not have this problem.