Passive Pre - No Regrets?

Gregm, thanks; so I guess the Silver Rock was the only TVC.

Audiomadness. Thanks for the clarification - it makes sense to me now. There is obviously a lot of different experiences out there regarding the use of passives (I did not really know what they were 8 weeks ago). In my system I don't think an active can work better then the Placette. The speed, transparency, seperation of instruments, dynamics, bass etc - seems to all be there (an no maintenace). Not that I'm not wondering about the Placette Active, or what a TVC approach might do. But I think the CAT pre that I had and just sold must be considered one of the better active preamplifiers on the market, and in terms of sound quality I am more than satisifed having made the switch. My sense is that passives are "cult" items for the same reason that low wattage SETs are. In the right system they are magic, in the wrong system they can be less than inspiring. They requiring more thought in system building. I have enjoyed finding a low cost, SOTA alternative to active pres - perhaps the passives are less flexible, can't be universally applied, but with the right system approach, they are more than worthy contenders. I'd like to thank everyone for their input and experiences. It has been an interesting experiment. But, what about that Placette Active...

People like Guy Placette and Emmanuel Go (who originally offered a passive design that is no longer avalailable) designed and built active preamps for a reason.

"People like Guy Placette and Emmanuel Go (who originally offered a passive design that is no longer avalailable) designed and built active preamps for a reason. "

Which is???

I think Pubul57 puts it very nicely, "passives are a cult item" if you are able, and knowledgeable enough, and have the right system for it, it is "magic" : if one of the above is missing, it wont work: Then you can get the active.

If you swap equipment a lot you will need the active also.

But lets ask them!

Another issue which I dont think is fair to apply it but it is real: a Passive Preamp is pretty cheap and there is really no way of making it very expensive (unless you use silver transformers I guess); but an Active Preamp can be sold for a lot of money, even without silver transformers!

FWIW, the issue you face with TVCs is hysteresis loss, which introduces low level distortion whenever the signal changes polarity (IOW- loss of low level detail). Additionally there will be changes in bandwidth depending on the tap selected. Careful design can minimize the latter but there is nothing to be done for the former- its a fact of life for all audio signal transformers except those in the current path of a single-ended device.

Since a single-ended device (tube or transistor) biases the core of the transformer, the zero crossing of the signal occurs at 1/2 the total saturation of the transformer- in effect there is zero hysteresis loss.

So- if you wanted to use a TVC this would be one way of doing that for those of you who are DIYers- combining the technologies.