If you are happy with the sound, that is all that is important. The one thing I have noticed, is that many, if not all folks that have tried the passive route (I have used Placette, K&K SB102, Bent Tap)seem to go back to actives, especially to tube preamps. |
The clarity of passives is very impressive at first, it sounds so different than actives in that regards that it is very alluring. But after several tries, I ultimately decided that active stages provided a better listening experience for me. I don't know why that would be technically so, passives seem to have such a minimalist appeal to them, but something always seemed to be missing for me (output impedance, gain, sensitivity, input impedance, and cable capactance were not limiting factors); others love passives for what they don't do to the signal so you just have to listen and make your choice. You will find folks who will be in one camp or the other on this. Count me in for the active crowd. |
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. |
Tony, I think you and I have gone through a similar path and respeonded to passives in the same way. Ultimately a very good tubed preamp just gives me the kind of sound I prefer. I was going back and forth with the Bent Tap-X Autoformer and decided to stick the Joule and Atma-sphere preamps. Now, the fact that something so much cheaper is in the running tells you a little bit about how much bang for the buck you get from passives. The rest does seem to be personal preference and that is hard to prejudge for another person. |
OP, I guess the answer is it depends. It depend on the system context, and it depends on your preference for the type of sound that appeals to you. I will see that in a properly matched system (CD with 100Kohm input impedance on the amp and low capacitance (or short) ICs) it is pretty darn hard to beat the value of something like the Bent Transformer or Autoformer (I prefer)TVCs. I can tell you that it is very well designed, sounds great, and will give most if not all active linestages a mighty tough time justifying the cost difference, which doesn't mean you won't fine a wonderful tube preamp that does something for you that makes the price worth paying. |
Mrtennis, I agree with you in that there is an element of subjectivity in what we like or don't like, there is certainly room for personal preference, but I think there is a limit to that argument as well, there is after all good taste and bad taste with some range of difference of opnion, but a speaker that has large anomalies in frequecy response, or lacks balance, or images poorly, a whole slew of "objective" criteria that is measurable is poor by any measure, and if one likes those kinds of abberations from neutrality I think that person's opinion is not likely to be very useful to most people - there is room for taste, but reproduced sound does exist within the range of a basic recipe based on some level of accuracy to the source signal. Whileone might not make a decision on "objective" data alone, it is not a bad starting point either. |
Phaelon, if the imaging is in the recording and you're not hearing it, why would that be? Not that it should be a goal to have imaging per se, you are right, it doesn't really exist in live music, at least not much in my experience, but if it is in the recording and it doesn't come through in the reproduction doesn't it suggest that something is missing that shouldn't be? It would seem to suggest a loss of information, whether "real" or not. |
Hi Phaelon, I do know what you mean about detail that can drive you to distraction, and truly accurate timbre and dynamics are much more important to me then imaging, as I really don't find much imaging in live music, more like a wall of sound. I'm not sure if this is a problem of recording techniques, but I suspect Rleff is right about that, my only point is that if for good or bad, if it is in the recording something might be suspect if the equipment isn't conveying those what is in the recording. Now whether it is in anyway a necessary part of enjoying a musical performance, I would say it is fairly low in my list of priorities. Besides, I never disagree with Clio09:) |
I think I know what ambient information means, it puts the instruments within a specific space or venue. So ambient information provides that additional sense of instruments in a particulat environment, not simply localization within a soundstage. If that is what it means, then it makes sense to me how this allows for some of sense of "truthfullness". |
