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Are passive preamps bad?

You have the Glasshouse TVC kit (can be bought build and tested for 850£) sold by Hifi Collective, a very snake oil audio component and kits store from the UK. I saw and heared it once (was a diy build) and it seems to work quiet well.

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But i still prefer a no gain but buffered preamp above it. That (when done right) has no sound coloration worth mentioning and does not cost that much to make. Use good opamps for the buffer, the real good ones like the OPA1642 cost less than 3€ (and much less in big quantities).

Ans nothing against a "real" preamp. I actually now use my MiniDSP Flex as preamp in my main system and that is also transparant and actually costed less than this preamp, and has dsp and so...
 
A simple passive pre-amp (literally, "before the amp") can be very effective. I started using one between an Airport Express and amplifiers years ago when my system became single source. I did a lot of web reading before making the decision to try one. One article that helped me understand the relevant concepts was this one:
 
If it's going to have an analog volume pot it should be active to properly buffer it imho.

Sorry but transformer volume controls are about the silliest thing ever, up there with maybe ground boxes and crystals. Except those are almost certainly more transparent than any transformer volume control is.

Simple digital volume control is the greatest contribution DSP has made to audio, IMHO.
 
If it's going to have an analog volume pot it should be active to properly buffer it imho.

Sorry but transformer volume controls are about the silliest thing ever, up there with maybe ground boxes and crystals. Except those are almost certainly more transparent than any transformer volume control is.

Simple digital volume control is the greatest contribution DSP has made to audio, IMHO.
I very recently acquired a WiiM Pro Plus and am slowly becoming conditioned to its level control and other features.
 
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