but isnt the SB the preamp now? it controls volume and does the DAC work, I would say you like your SB better than your old preamp.
That is one way of looking at it. I wouldn't say the sb3 is the pre-amp, I'd say there is no pre-amp. Though I think we tend to hope that pre-amps pass source signals fairly transparently to the pre-amp.. And that isn't necessarily the case. I do lose potential output volume, because the pre-amp can add gain beyond the source level.
I wanted to dig an old CD player out of storage to try that as a source, and see if it also sounds superior without the pre on my system.