I have 2 Benchmark LA-4 pre amps. Love them. Rory at Benchmark is great to deal with. Reasonable price, 30 day trial period, Made in New York. Adjustable bias, etc. Robert TN Bet you keep it!!
How to set up volume control on a DAC without a preamp
I am creating my system and trying to decide on a DAC. I don't have a preamp at this time and the preamps I am looking at are quite expensive. Several DAC's that i'm looking at doesn't have volume control either. Is it possible to set up volume control in ROON or HQ Player until I can get the money together for the preamp?
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I also have the Benchmark LA4. I find a volume control on a DAC not a feature but a bug. The LA4 is for people who do not want the pre to color the sound. Using a preamp like the LA4 (or the almost the same Holo Serene) will take your DAC to sonic levels that a built-in volume control never did for me. I use my 2 preamps on costlier amps. The Topping pre90 premp is much cheaper and measures like the LA4 (and Serene) but it had many negative issues for me.
This was a big issue for me when I used the Musetec 005's DACs volume control. Those little buttons also make it hard to quickly lower the volume.
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As others have said, the Schiit SYS is probably the simplest way to get a high quality potentiometer into your signal path. They make good stuff. https://www.schiit.com/products/sys |
- 29 posts total