Placette Passive Owners...

i have used my Placette with a few different preamps, also with the Audio Aero Capitole II. as long as the interconnect from the RVC to the amps is kept short the Placette seems to be transparent.

specifically, with the Audio Aero i found that if i used the had the volume control at 'full gain' (unity gain) and attenuated with the Placette RVC, the sound was more transparent, quicker, and less tubey.....more how i prefer it. to me this was exposing the volume control in the AA as limiting performance.

i also tried this with the Lamm L2 but in that case there was no difference whether the Placette was there or not. i either had the L2 'wide open' or the Placette 'wide open'.

i have also used it with the volume control in the Tenor intergrated OTL amps (75Wi). again, i could not hear a difference whether the RVC was there or not.

if you are trying this the volume control in the active gain stage must be 'wide open' and the Placette needs to have an interconnect to the amps 1 meter or less.

Howie,

i assume that your reason to have the Placette RVC between the source and active pre would be to add the remote feature. otherwise, there will be no benefit (it may not hurt but can't help the performance).

in my experience i can't hear the Placette RVC in or out when properly used.....OTOH it doesn't 'help'....it just 'is'.

i am not saying that the Placette doesn't have a sound.....just that so far i've not heard it in pretty resolving systems.

to answer your question; i never tried it between a source and an active pre.....it just never occured to me to try it. the closest i got was when i used it wih the Tenor OTL integrated's.....which was what caused me to go the Placette RVC way in the first place.

you need a relatively high input impedence on your amps (mine are 40k) and your amps need to have adaquate gain. speakers sensitivity does enter into the equation as your amp gain x speaker sensitivity gets you SPL.

interconnects should be 1 meter or less.....although this is just another varible along with the others above. the output impedence and output voltage of your sources also is part of the equation.

as you can see.....use of a passive can be highly system dependent. i switched to the balanced version of the RVC to get additional gain for my low output cartridge and phono stage.

WHEN all is right passive does bring you closer to the music....there is less in the way.

YMMV