Thought I would documents some updates to my system and maybe try to quantify them (a personal scale, totally made up).
Before I started my post my system was a 2/10.
After this post, looking back, I would give it a 3/10.
I moved to Goa, and got a room 3X the size and high ceilings -> 3.5/10
Two months back I finally sucked it up and bought a preamp. My take on it: I have been trying to eliminate the preamp for years, and failed (do not do it). There is one caveat. I will come to it later.
With preamp -> 4.5/10
Adding a capacitor based power supply that isolated the preamp from the AC mains. -> 5/10,
this was actually huge change for the preamp moving to a capacitor based power supply.
Finally I was able to listen to my system, a few songs on the time, without starting to browse audiogon for a new component. Phew! Now I could focus on the music.
What I was missing all these years was a real tube based preamp.
I should have done an integrated or bought a preamp so long ago. But better late than never.
No matter what DAC companies say, the volume control of a dac doesn't cut it, even if the DAC (like my Bricasti M12) claims to have an analog volume control and can switch between sources.