Are passive preamps better?

Entrope, yes, you are correct. I don't really know whether anyone has ever measured this, so it is really a personal judgment or a comparative judgment. I find that I grow bored with the music using a passive, that I find myself not shaking my foot in time with the music, and that is just lacks the leading edge of the music.

FYI - the Placette "Active" (which is a zero gain pre with a buffer)has an output impedance of 10ohms or so and will "match" with any amp input impedance and, I'm told, almost any length cable. Of course, I think it is selling for $7000 now. Some may argue it is not a passive, but it has no gain stages which is a primary reason for the quiet and transparent quality of most passives.

Pubul57, I did try the Placette "Active" briefly and did like it better than the totally passive unit. I also thought there were better active line stages.

I should say that I certainly have heard active units that were worse than the passives, the Crown 150IC and several others come to mind. The top passives that I have had are the Audio Consulting Silver Rock and the Top Dog, which is no longer made.

Thanks to absolutely everyone for the discussion. I don't know when I've learned so much about audio. I'll bet it's true that receivers and integrateds have no active preamp. That's how they sound. All of you filled a big hole in my audio experience. A lot of things came together as a result. Cheers. Lynne

The Placette "Active" approach of following passive switching and volume control functions with a unity gain buffer seems ideal to me. In practice most preamps are operated at less than unity gain overall although within the unit there may be many dB of gain. Most of it is discarded in the volume control. Most disc players, for example, have a nominal output of 2 volts rms, and 2 volts would drive most power amps into clipping.

When I built my home brew "passive preamp" several decades ago I also built what I called a "line driver" which was a unity gain buffer amp with high input impedance and low output impedance. This was necessary when I changed power amps from tube units with 250K input impedance (high even for a tube amp) to SS amps more like 20K. I was very aware of output impedance requirements from my work as an aerospace systems engineer where it was necessary to transmit both analog and digital signals through as much as 300 feet of 20-year-old wires. There was always a circuit dedicated to this "line driver" job.