The reason the Placette Passive is hard to "characterize" is that It has no "character." That's the beauty of the piece: It's transparency(added and subtracting nothing/doing no harm). It just lets exactly what emanates from your source(good or bad) to pass to the rest of the system with ONLY a change in the volume. The one reason I sold mine was my bi-amped system couldn't play loud enough with some of the un-compressed recordings I love. I'm a realistic SPL freak. The Placette Active unit would probably have satisfied that hunger, but then I wouldn't have made the major paradigm shift that I did: jumping right from a life long straight-wire-with-gain/digital hating/don't-tamper-with-the-signal nut to a TacT RCS 2.2X lover. That didn't even have the gain that I needed until I upgraded the power supply. You're right Mr B: If there is any imbalance at all, anywhere in your system/room/tubes- It will greatly affect imaging, sound stage, etc. A balance control IS a very nice thing to have. Again, YES- The Placette is the Rolls-Royce of passive linestages.
new experience with my passive preamp
Promised to relay my recent acquisition experience of the passive
pre-amp as opposed to my active beaut.
Well, after four or five hours of listening, the benefits
of the Placette remote volume control is clearly audible.
My system: Lamm amps, Avantegarde Duo speakers, Mark
Levinson 390S processor. Replaced the Lamm DL11, deluxe.
Note well: the AV Duos are very sensitive and the bottom
end may still be too loud unless a mod is added to lower
the volume.
pre-amp as opposed to my active beaut.
Well, after four or five hours of listening, the benefits
of the Placette remote volume control is clearly audible.
My system: Lamm amps, Avantegarde Duo speakers, Mark
Levinson 390S processor. Replaced the Lamm DL11, deluxe.
Note well: the AV Duos are very sensitive and the bottom
end may still be too loud unless a mod is added to lower
the volume.