I am thinking of going down the route of separate pre/power amps. Thinking of matching the tube based Audio Research SP16L with a solid state power amp. However, I only have one source (CD player) and I expect that will be so for some time to come, so I was wondering if there is a simpler (and cheaper) solution. For example, could I connect the CDP directly to the power amp? Or rather than spend lots of money on a full function pre-amp (but only use one of the inputs), is there some simple box that has just one set of inputs and a volume control?