Passive preamp vs. powered

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S&B

Count me as a passive fan. I have a few different types lying around - AVC, resistive, opto-coupler - and listen to them regularly. Sold my last active preamp and not intending to go back.

Ralph made a good point about eliminating the cable by placing the passive volume control in the amp. You might look into EVS attenuators which plug into the amp inputs and accept a cable from your source on the back end. This is a nice solution if you only have one source to deal with.

In my case, I never heard a passive preamp that impressed me. Be it the high price Silver TVC's from S&B or any other manufacturer etc. I always find them weak in the "attack" department. Passive preamp to me have that "sleepy" tone and tends to sound "slow" as you increase the volume. Besides, they are not flexible in terms of what electronics to use and with real world cable lengths applications. I mean, why do you have to add a parameter to the whole system equation if you can avoid it.

To me, I do not believe that passive preamps strength is clarity, ever! If it is, then I assume that the one reporting never heard a decent to a very good design active preamp especially those with low output impedance and can drive the amp in use better. I always examine the equipments of the owners reporting the claim and make my conclusion as to what they have or had and build my impression from there.

As always, system matching is the key but for me given the choices, I will never own a passive preamp anymore. FWIW, there are many circuits floating around for tube preamp designs and maybe you can expand your consideration in building one yourself. As you read more about them, you will notice that proven designs that even use NOS tubes like 10Y, 76, 26, 27, etc. are available and users reported lots of good praises about them.

All of the above are just my opinions base on what I heard of course.

Caveat: I own a preamp that uses 76 tubes.

This is typical of the passive vs. active discussions you will find. A real mix of experiences and preferences. One thing I will say, is that every passive I tried offered alot of bang for the buck, they are very good in many ways and hard to beat for the money assuming proper impedance matches, a tube amp is almost always a better choice due to its high input impedance. Ralph knows 10,000x more about this than I do, and I have to believe his position is proabably sound, and it may be that an amp with a built-in passive volume control would provide the best option. I can only say that as much as I wanted to love them, because of their simplicity and price, over time, I prefered my CAT, Joule, or Atma-sphere tubed preamps. The only answer to this, is for you to try it and draw your own conclusions because you never going to get a defintive, conclusive answer - it really is a matter of going with your ears and deciding for yourself. On a budget, I think choosing a passive is a no brainer, and for some, even when money is no object.