Preamps waste of money?

To gain absolute purity cred, you need to avoid music recorded by any method other than direct to disc, although ideally music should bypass everything and should only be listened to when performed by naked musicians using acoustic instruments played while they stand on boxes in the open air in a semi circle around your head.

My own experience with this has actually been something along the lines of Dracule1 - except, and I don't want to talk over him on this, that I never really accepted that the Goldpoint SMD (yes, SMD!, and honestly anyone is free to go ahead and laugh if they feel so inclined, but I have rather liked them) series attenuators that I installed inside the rear of a pair of SM-70 Pro balanced monoblocks...that they were somehow actually *Better* than a $3k linestage. Just that they were to me pretty much 'on par' with one, but for a tenth of the price. Would my ears tell me I'd prefer the pre?? Oh, in a sense at least, it's not easy for me to imagine otherwise, but I guess it's just that for me, my pockets usually aren't as deep as most in this hobby, for which I have never, and never will, complain about to anyone - but, 90% of they way there for (in this case) a tenth of the cost was about impossible for me to resist. At least until I finally buy that winning lottery ticket, that is! ;) Cheers.

Your likely just purchasing to cheap of a preamp. Try the Ayre KX-R, it completely removes itself from the signal path and allows the music to flow.
Friends often compare it to moving up many rows at a concert.

Have you tried those expensive pre amps in your system?
If you have and your results are as you are posting then who can argue with success.
Its really nice when all matches are lined up.

If you have the passive control in the amp then you can make it work and it will be difficult to find a preamp that will do better.

However having the volume control in the amplifier can be really inconvenient! This is especially true if you have more than one source.

If the passive control is not inside the amplifier then its the other way 'round- you won't find a passive that can do better (meaning: more transparent, more detailed, more impact, more musical) than a good active preamp.

The caveat is that not all preamps are created equal; IMO/IME a passive can be easily better than a preamp that does not have its ducks in a row. A good preamp however will control and limit the effects of the interconnect cable- IOW if you are hearing big differences between cables then you have a problem.