Ralph is product (his active preamp) protection mode, omitting the
reason behind a "why" the "rare" times a passive "may not" be the least
coloured, least distorted, and best dynamically
The reason passive controls tend to sound more colored is they are unable to buffer the control, they are unable to control the otherwise audible artifacts of the interconnect cables. They sound best (more bass, more 'realness' across the audio band) when the control is set to maximum but of course this isn't practical.