Do I really need a preamp?

I believe even in Stereophile John Atkinson states 47k-51k input impedance has been an unofficial input impedance standard now for over 50 years for most home audio S/S products input resistances. Since it was made the standard for MM cartridge loading way back and they followed suit with preamp and poweramps at 47k-51k.

Tube amps have even higher up to and higher than 100kohm which is even better for higher value passives like 20kohm ones.

As for the very few amps that are 10k that many tube preamps won't drive, they constitute probably less than 1%
of the market share.

Cheers George

For years I used a Preamp. Once I bought the PS Audio Direct Stream Dac and sent the output to my BSG QOL and then to my Amp, I sold my Preamp.

"I really do as it sounds much better if you have a great preamp as i do."

OK, I will ask: Ebm, what preamp do you have?

I do have to say I have purposely picked out matching components that support and complement my system with a passive attenuator. We can't get away from things being system dependent I don't think. I have heard some great sounding systems with active pre.'s. It seems to me I can hear extra electronics in my system when I put in more that I have. I am probably delusional but that's ok with me. I like the less is more if I can make it work. And it has worked really well for me.

Yes, George, John may well have stated that. I gave up believing everything I read in Stereophile decades ago. If a tube amp the input impedance can be set almost arbitrarily but most manufacturers go with 100K and I have seen some that are as high as 1 Megohm.

For solid state, 10K is usually the bottom end of the range and 100K is the highest, most likely an amplifier with FET input. Dynaco built their PAS3x to be able to work with 10K. ARC OTOH does not expect to see less than 30K with their preamps. We build our 2 bigger preamps to be OK with 600 ohms and our smaller preamp is good down to 10K.

Bottom line is its all over the map, Stereophile notwithstanding.