Passive Pre - No Regrets?

Great report, and may I say that I'm not at all surprised at the outcome.

Is your Active brand new? Because I believe Guy thinks they keep getting better over time. Like wine, or cheese.

The better sound of the active unit comes as no surprise. The real question is whether the active unit is competitive with less expensive active units.

Tbg, the nice thing about the Placette marketing model, is you can try it in your home for 30-days and determine how it compares with what you have. So they make it easy to answer the question for your self, directly, in your system, for your taste. I won't say something silly like it smoked the ARC,Lamm, or CAT, but I prefer its sound to theirs (they are all excellent units). Personal taste rules, but the Placette should be on the audtion list, not just with comparably priced units, but with anything out there, IMHO.

Has anyone tried the Musical Fidelity Tube Buffer to address the impedence matching problems? Does this make any sense?

Kensetsu, I think that does make sense. Do you have specs on the unit? Output impedance?