consensus on passive preamps?

I have gone from passive to active for practical reasons. When my child was born in seemed prudent to move as much equipment away from curious fingers as possible. Longer interconnects were required and the demands for a sucessful passive system were no longer possible. In acitive mode I get a bit more bass impact and dynamics. In passive mode a bit more purity of sound. These effects are pretty subtle. One curious thing I discovered was that my purely passive device sounded better than my active device with gain stage removed (via a switch) and used passively. Now this all went on some time ago. Hence for reasons of lack of funds and extreme caution re: expendenture on a new hobby (read cheap)I wasn't using the best equipment. One of the best amplification rigs I've heard was the "First Sound" with a passive line stage and a dual mono class A amp. The key to making passive work is to do your home work, the requirements are fairly strict. Whether passive is better, I don't know. I would consider acive first, but wouldn't rule out passive. Interestingly enough, some of the origianl manufacturers of passive line stages went onto unity gain devices. I have not tried them. Perhaps this is the best compromise? The future of digital amplification may make all of this moot.

Simply put, all else being equal, ANY active sytem CANNOT be as TRANSPARENT as passive. If your source output impedence is low, as it should be, speakers sensitivity and amp input senstivity not too low, and listening volume not abusive, your home free. In my experience, these factors rarely add up to a problem but can. Having done alot of experimentation, parts quality makes a big difference. If you're not afraid of a soldering iron, constructing your own is not prohibitive and , of course, puts you in a position of upping parts quality for less money. Stepped ladder attenuators using even low cost 1/8th watt resistors(smaller is better) will blow away the best pot. A few hundred $ in parts and a few hours will blow away ANY "preamp" including the CJ ART; unless you're after additives and colorations, in which case there's no argueing and personal taste rules as always. Why waste money?

Passive? certainly.

Or why not run without a preamp,or even an Amplifier. No Amps? Ooops. No way! Yes. Run the output to a highly sensitive speaker like the avantgarde. Well technically the lows are handled by its built in amplification,the mids and highs by the cd player.
Very weird configuration,but i heard one on demo.

A little late perhaps to jump in on this thread, but I agree with Ultrakaz to some extent. I do like analog volume controls built in to the source component, and have owned many CD players and DACs that allow me to go directly into the amp. I think that any system will sound better without a pre-amp. But the Silver Rock is different. It functions as an isolation transformer, and causes a much blacker background. More details emerge from the music, which is now grainfree and pure. It is the only pre-amp that I will use.