Passive Pre - No Regrets?

I have my passive attenuators are inside my mono amps, the attenuator is a couple of inches away from the input tube. I have good dynamics but my old SS preamp was much more dynamic! I guess thats what you loose with passives against active.
I used to have an outboard attenuator box and did not notice a lot of difference when I put the attenuators inside the amps. I did notice a big change when I used all resistors inside, I guess the big change was due mainly to resistors against the alps pot, more than the lenght of the cables...

Pubul57 please let us know how you do with the Placette passive and the changes you notice against the CAT, this is very important to me since I still have the bug for an active preamp.

Jsadurni,

1. What is the output voltage and impedence of your sources? 2. What is the input sensitivity and impedence of your amps?
3. What type of interconnects are you using?

Darkmoebius:

Source EAD 7000 III DAC
Output voltage 2V
output impedance 50 ohms

Amps Leak TL12.1
Input sensitivity
148mV r.m.s. input gave 12 watts output at 1,000 c/s.
Input impedance 1 meg ohm

Perfect for a passive?

Speakers are 94 db sensitivity

Jsadurni, you should be fine with a passive..just make sure the next one is a TVC not the PLC with autoformers. I watch movies with my TVC..no shortage in dynamics.Also from what I've read the PLC with autoformers doesn't electrically isolate input from output like a TVC. This means you'll have less noise filtered with the PLC. Give it another go..before you throw in the towel.

Good luck

"Also from what I've read the PLC with autoformers doesn't electrically isolate input from output like a TVC. This means you'll have less noise filtered with the PLC."

In theory then, that would be a good thing.

FWIW, the task of the volume control is *not* to filter noise! I would suspect that there are other reasons for a preference.