[roskodan]

Since Hugo's designer suggested the best way to use Hugo (most transparent, most hi-fi, way), and every other hi-fi 'digital' preamp, would be directly feeding (driving?) a power amplifier (=power stage?) with it, thous omitting the need for a pot (maybe even any additional 'pre power-stage' gain stage???), and not being able to find any headphones 'pure power amp' design on the net, i've been asking myself of the possibility to adapt an existing diy amp design to match that function, preferably the simplest possible to match the performance of the like of http://www.pmillett.com/ tube amps (adapting the Fatboy 300B???), or some SS (some nice class A SS, Beta22 inspired stuff?)
 
idk, total noob in amp design, tho i do understand the basics, i'm wondering, is it plausible to drive a power stage directly with, for e.g., the Hugo as peramp (without additional gain stages, or is it still needed?)?
 
basically i'm asking someone with knowledge in the matter to suggest the correct approach for achieving this goal either by designing a power stage from scratch or by adapting some of  existing power stages from those 'integrated amps' to be directly driven from such a preamp output as the Hugo's

 

[OJNeg]

Confused about the question, but the answer is definitely. In fact most Head-Fi'ers are doing exactly that; DAC directly into amp (or power stage) without any preamp. It's mostly 2-channel stereo people who are still using dedicated preamps.
 
If you're asking a question about digital attenuation vs. analog attenuation...well that's different. I'd only take digital attenuation over a cheap, grainy Chinese pot. The best analog attenuation solutions surpass any digital one in terms of sonics.