For me I just found it irritating to have to raise the volume at home whenever switching to the Empeg from a louder source such as my CD player. I guess you would technically get better S/N ratio as you would be applying less gain from your amp or preamp. However, the Empeg's signal is so quiet (free of noise) I'm not sure you'd notice. I guess it would be more for convenience.

I'll have to pour over the opamp doc and see how to go about raising volume to 4 volts.

Stu