Preamps waste of money?

Tmsorosk, I would gave to disagree. When I installed the goldpoint attenuators, the sound became more full with increased harmonic detail and dynamics. It wasn't warm in the classical tube sense, but there was less tilting of the sound toward brightness. This is antithesis of what I hear with SS. I play classical guitar, and some of my classical guitar recordings tend to bright and hard, closer to steel string guitar rather than the creamy full sound of nylon strings. Most probably wouldn't notice this coloration unless you play acoustic guitar. Now these recordings actually sound like the real thing, the most neutral sound I've gotten from my system.

Grannyring, my bad. It's hard to interpret the intent of some posts. I enjoyed reading your Dude thread.

Devilboy, we have similar experience with these passives. I have to admit though in my system the stepped attenuator in the input of the amp was hands down better than the external passives.

I've just been through this process myself. I'm a great fan of TVC passives as they really provide a detailed uncoloured sound for a relatively small amount of money. I've used a SAC TVC, briefly used a Music First Mk II and recently a StereoKnight Silverstone B&R. The choice seems to be between detail or energy until you reach a particular quality point. Unfortunately my experience is that this is quite expensive. I finally have found the detail that I have had from the StereoKnight or Music First but with the power and control of an active. It has cost me though.

I've been curious about many aspects of this thread for some time. I use a NAD M51 DAC as a source and preamp straight to my SS amp through balanced interconnects. I've tried using an active SS preamp before but I always loose something in the process and i end up removing the active preamp. I'm intrigued what a tubed preamp such as something from Balanced could contribute to the system since it accepts XLR inputs and outputs. The mix of SS and Tube gear is said to work well with my Thiels. However I can't get over the thought that when it comes to gear less is more and why would adding something else in the chain of information make it better and not worse. It would seem the more components added In the signals line the more the original signal is changed. For this reason passive preamps intrigue me too since it would seem they would render less change to the signal than an active preamps. But I'm not an electrical engineer, so take my ramblings as such.