I don’t now why the normal rules wouldn’t apply - passives work best being fed a low input impedance signal (<200’ish ohms) then output to a high impedance amplifier input (>50K ohms) and being positioned so the output IC only needs to travel a short distance to the amplifier (<1.5M).
Even if you meet those guidelines, some (but not all) still find their passives lacking in tonal body and drive that active stages seem to provide. The only passives I didn’t have that issue with were AVC types.