I agree too. The active Placette does the preamp job with out any significant coloration (just a touch of added sparkle). The passive version is lovely, and fantastic at the price, but I find passives (even the Placette) still don't quite make it. I simply do not concur with the popular wisdom of warming things up with a tube preamp - look elsewhere and remove the problem - adding countervailing distortions is just wrong, wrong, wrong (in my humble opinion of course - I can see the negative votes now).
