Won't preamps become obsolete?

"though passive pre's add nothing to the signal-they sound waayy tooo threadbare ..."

My experience does not support the statement above.
My cdp has a volume control, but I still prefer the Placette Passive linestage in the chain. The Placette replaced a $6k tube preamp in my system.

I think Bigkidz is right about the importance of matching and the quality of the volume control. These are two of the reasons the Placette performs so well.

Aside from the discussion whether active, or passive, or no preamp can work better, may I mention another way to enhance signal transfer? Although I am a fan of the $350 EVS Ultimate Attenuators from tweakaudio.com, I have found that there is a way to improve passive or active preamp, or even no preamp (Ultimate Attenuators.)
Placing the SCE Harmonic Recovery System active box (no controls to adjust) between the CD source and the amplification seems to greatly enhance the CD listening experience.

Most volume controls in amps and CDP are of low quality volume control which really restrict dynamics and sound quality. If you are thinking going direct from source to amp, you need a very high quality volume control. I listen to vinyl only and I have a phono stage with a pair of transformer volume control (TVC) which is arguably the best kind of volume control. Some audiophiles use TVC in a passive box for their CDP. Most CDPs have digital volume control, which is the worst thing you can have. In any preamp, whether it's active or passive, volume control is extremely critcal, it could act as the bottle-neck for the whole system. TVC is expensive, but is really worth the money considering it control the sound level of your system, which could be many times the money of your volume control.

If we look onto many amps made today,
They already have a neccessary preamplification especially ones with differential input stages.
To have a few dB larger sencitivity may have an extra pre-drive stage.
In reality it's piece of cake to make from power amp an integrated one and build the volume controll after the drive or pre-drive stage so the issue with impedance matching will go away for good.
The minimalistic line preamps suchas McCormack TLC, RLD or Micro Line Drive will not become obsolete as they're just buffers with unity gain and extra inputs with input selector. To have integrated monoblocks is not so convenient anyway. They provide the minimal path for the signal interface.

I don't think so. Even when the technology gets to the point that power supplies are quiet enough so they don't require isolation in seperate boxes,I suspect preamps will endure because of the gadget aspect of another neat looking box on the rack and the commissions to the persons who sell them.