Teajay, I know you have owned a very fine TVC passive, as well as the Placette Active (buffer - no gain) - so you certainly were and might still be open to unity gain in a preamp conceptually. Do you (and Grannyring, et. al.) think that the magic provided from your active linestages is a result of gain, or buffering?
Just to show my bias here, I suspect if the active is working better for you it is not about gain, that if your source output is twice or more what your amp's input sensitivity is that gain is simply a non-factor in the quality of sound - as Nelson Pass quoted above suggests - it is just a waste (to paraphrase). I don't know if you agree with this so far. But it does seem that any improvement would come from the buffering effect to match impedances better and control ICs (as Ralph Karsten would suggest if I understand hime correctly, and perhaps A. Salvatore might argue the same) - and then there is the issue of tube beuffering versus solid state.
So gain? Buffering? What is the active doing that makes it work better in your system? I will say that in the case of both George, and Roger Modjeski (RAM Labs/Music Reference)they both felt that adding a buffer would only be a step backwords as they both felt I did not need it (though Roger would build it for me if I insisted) and that no buffer always sounds better than any buffer if you don't need buffering.
Now Roger does not come on these sites to comment, but his argument for passive is pretty much identical to George's, though George also argues his passive mousetrap is better since there are no points of contact between wiper and resistor (always a good thing?). Roger's only comment was about the challenge of maintaining channel to channel balance across frequency which he thought would be difficult - but I think he thought the LDR idea was interesting....
Just to show my bias here, I suspect if the active is working better for you it is not about gain, that if your source output is twice or more what your amp's input sensitivity is that gain is simply a non-factor in the quality of sound - as Nelson Pass quoted above suggests - it is just a waste (to paraphrase). I don't know if you agree with this so far. But it does seem that any improvement would come from the buffering effect to match impedances better and control ICs (as Ralph Karsten would suggest if I understand hime correctly, and perhaps A. Salvatore might argue the same) - and then there is the issue of tube beuffering versus solid state.
So gain? Buffering? What is the active doing that makes it work better in your system? I will say that in the case of both George, and Roger Modjeski (RAM Labs/Music Reference)they both felt that adding a buffer would only be a step backwords as they both felt I did not need it (though Roger would build it for me if I insisted) and that no buffer always sounds better than any buffer if you don't need buffering.
Now Roger does not come on these sites to comment, but his argument for passive is pretty much identical to George's, though George also argues his passive mousetrap is better since there are no points of contact between wiper and resistor (always a good thing?). Roger's only comment was about the challenge of maintaining channel to channel balance across frequency which he thought would be difficult - but I think he thought the LDR idea was interesting....