Are passive preamps better?

Hi Arnettpartners, When doing a passive preamp the type and quality of the attenuators are critical, You may want to check out Goldpoint at http://www.goldpt.com/ for some info and their products. Even if you dont go for a passive preamp it is good to change all potentiometers in any of your equipment to stepped attenuator types for much improved channel balance and clarity.
Bob

OK, Bob. Thanks. Last night I searched Placette under discussion forums. One member said that a passive preamp needs 40 k ohms input impedence from amp. That might help explain why some people are happy and some are not with passive preamps and goes to Eldhartford's rremarks on many amps going into clipping. So I might not be going passive but I will check out the attenuators. Lynne

1. The Placette attentuators (on both the RVC and Active) are arguably the finest ever made.

2. THe 40 kohm spec might (not sure about that) be true for the Placette RVC, not the "Active" - the active will drive (in terms of impedance matching) any amp you can find.

OK. Are there likely to be differences in passives? There's a Goldpount for sale. Lynne

I did not make that question clear. I think it was a dumb question. It seems to me that all passive preamps of decent quality would be equal in terms of how the amp sees them. If one didn't work, none would. (I'm not including the Placette Active in this group). I tend to try taking the lower cost route and that usually doesn't work out and then I buy the piece I should have bought origianlly. I know better, but there I go again. If the cd player direct to amp didn't wrk because of the inferrior volume control then a passive would solve the problem. The Goldpoint for sale would be a somewhat low cost experiment.