Sound without the Preamp ?

Passive preamps have nothing to do with a CD player that has an integrated volume control, as I've said many times before. Such a CD player simply and effectively puts an active linestage inside the chassis of the CD player...just in case some are misunderstanding that.

What you are saying Carl, sounds right to me, but depends on how the DAC achieves the volume control. For example in the early Theta DS Pres, they used some OP47s in the first analogue stage after the DAC. The OP47s drove both the fixed line out and a preamp stage. The preamp stage had switches, balance pots, a volume pot and then a further line stage using BUF03s. To my ears the sound was seriously degraded between the fixed out and the pre out. In certain cases, using the fixed out into another preamp or even into a passive was superior. The gains from having the pre section in the DAC were minimal to non-existant depending on whether you used a superior preamp to Theta's preamp stage. How do Resolution do it?

toMbhcid: In many combinations with a passive preamp what you have heard as to loss of "musical" properties matches my experience. If your CD player or DAC was designed to drive a power amp with an itegrated volume control that's one thing. If the design assumed an active line stage the combo of CD player or DAC, interconnects and power amp(s) may work or not. I tried several combinations before I found one that I liked overall better than a high quality line stage. I now use no preamp and a "shunt to ground" volume control from audiotweakers.com on the balanced inputs of my Melos monoblocks. That set up sounds better than the passsive preamps that I have tried.

I have had similar experiences with lack of drive from passives, but passives can work very well with tube power amps due to the high input impedence of the typical tube amp.

Has anyone used the "Ultimate Attenuator". What are its advantages/disadvantages?