Preamps waste of money?

I'm not sure one can ever determine if his preamp is "neutral" unless he was at the recording session and all his other components in the chain are neutral.

Bingo! I made a recording in 1986 that went to LP. It has proven invaluable to me over the years (I have the master tape) to understanding what is neutral and what is not.

Atmasphere,

was the studio you recorded it in neutral? Lol

since all stereo systems have a "sound", having a preamp, especially one with tubes, gives you the facility to change the "flavor" of your stereo system.

Mrtennis, I have a DAC that has an output tube and a rectifier tube. I have been changing those tubes to change the "flavor" of my system. Having too many tubes in a system hasn't been a good thing IME. Too much heat, to many tube failures, too much expense, and too much noise...any too much tubey goodness.

I can tell you first hand having a very expensive Ayon
preamp I borrowed ,the Nad-M51 digital vlume is 35 bit
and to get a -66 db signal before truncation it is impossible to hear in this case this digital direct output is one of the best out there and your amplifier and how good or bad it is ultimately will dictate it's sound character and ultimate resolution. I am running in pure class A with the Parasound Halo amps and it sounds excellent.If I may add the Nad is much better now that I added the Bryston BDP player to an external SS drive
with Wireworld Platinum USB cable ,and XLR.it is now world class at under $6k, and bettered My Ayon Skylla MK-2 dac which was very good and used the same Digital cable ,even did the Hifi tuning for the fuses
when combined with the Bryston bdp and cables the NAD won .
in overall resolution ,Bass and seperation of instruments the Ayon was a bit warmer and softer,and the Ayon has a Triode preamp section built in.By going direct to Amp the Amplifier is the Key.