If you have a preamp, a passive volume controller (e.g. JBL’s nanopatch), or can control the volume from your dac/source, then you can turn the volume of the Liquid Platinum to its unity gain (around 1:30pm on volume knob). Someone set their preamp gain down to -10dB on their player (Liquid Spark vs Monolith THX 887). When I use the unity gain, I set my player’s preamp down -12dB. Tbh, I like the sound without fiddling with my preamp settings despite having to whip out the old micrometer from time to time 