Dumb question......why do you need a preamp?

This is an issue for folks without a good system and realize they can build one without one with all digital. Sounds great... then they put a preamp into their system and realize all the body and naturalness of the sound they were missing. If they don’t do it, they may never know. There are lots of testimony to this effect scattered around this site.

@ghdprentice 100% my experience. With a good tube preamp - more palpable, alive, "full" sounding. Imaging is more holographic 3D, too. More satisfying and immersive.

I defintely won’t go back. I DO think it’s a coloration. But a really beautiful and special one - a happy accident the universe left for us to discover. We’re NOT scientific instrumentation. There is a very real possibility that our perception of musical information is maximized with reproductions that are "colored" in a certain way beneficial (symbiotic?) to our organic interpretations.

I have used active, passive and just volume controls on components. The best sound without question, for me, has always come from a active preamp. The most disappointing for me has been the performance I have gotten from several very high quality passives. 

I like minimum systems. So, one day I hooked my CD player directly into a top shelf stereo high-power amp. The CD had a volume level adjustment. It was just awful. You could almost hear the digital bits. I don't think anyone with a top system is skipping the pre-amp. 

I have 4 source components, turntable, tuner, SACD player and music server/player. I need a preamp. My 72 year old ears are not that good any longer, I use tone controls now. Never did before and that was dumb, suffering through some God-awful recordings because I was stubborn. I love my McIntosh preamp, blue meters and all.

@troutbum If you have an integrated amp you may not need a preamp.

But a preamp can be very useful if you have monoblock amplifiers. The reason is simple: the longer the speaker cable, the less resolution and impact you'll have out of the speakers.

Monoblocks allow you to keep speaker cables short. This might mean you have to run long interconnect cables to the amps. But if you have a good preamp, and especially if it is balanced line, that's no problem and you can have no loss in resolution or bandwidth doing that- no downside. A good preamp also reduces artifact you get from interconnect cables (usually this isn't a problem in an integrated amp).

Integrated amps usually trade off some sonic performance for size. You can see where this is going: the best systems often use monoblock amps with a preamp.