I have found that in real life passive pre's can sound very thin and bad. I'm sure it's system dependent, but if the impedances don't match well, it will sound bad.
Best preamp is no preamp: always true?
There seems to be a school of thought that between two well-designed (read no major flaws) CDP and AMP, the best PREAMP is NO PREAMP at all (let's assume that the AMP has a sort of minimalist volume control).
Is this a solid and robust statement? What would be situations where this is not true (still no major design flaws)?
Is this a solid and robust statement? What would be situations where this is not true (still no major design flaws)?