Hi,
I don’t use preamp in my system. Volume Control is on my DAC Elgar+ and on transport Network Bridge. I’m wondering where is better volume control quality. For my convenience i prefer NB volume control from my smartphone 
What to do you think, which is better?
Best regards, Hubert
IMO now the integrated amps are so good that dont need pre+power.
In the past i had big and hot amplifiers from Krell and a lot of money there and now that the cables are so expensive i only see advantages using integrated amps.
I use darTZell 8550MKII and it beats some more expensive pre+power amps combo but here i have one power cord, not 3. Then i only have one XLR analog cables not 2. I use Nordost Valhalla 2 in my system, so at the end is a lot of money saved that can be use to a better gear, also you dont have a correlative SQ increase with the price increase of pre-power.
Hubert, I think in theory you’re better off doing the Volume control on the Elgar+, close to the D/A conversion stage, instead of at the source on the Network Bridge. In practice though, you may or may not hear any sonic advantage. So, it really comes down to whichever is more convenient I guess.
Imay be wrong but I understand that the volume controls post Elgar have improved resolution. In which case Network Bridge nay be preferable.
True, I’m sure dCS’ Volume control algorithm has evolved quite dramatically over the course of the last 23 year since the Elgar+ was launched.
Still, the Control board on the NWB is quite rudimentary, and considering it’s only job is bitstream format conversion (rather than Processing/Upsampling/Filtering), and from MQA decoding we know volume control on the NWB directly affects bitstream transparency, it’s likely not the best place to do Volume control, sonically.