Placette RVC vs. Placette Active?

I compared the placette active to the placette passive (not the RVC) in a setup that did require a somewhat long interconnect to the amplifiers, so the passive was not in an ideal setup. Under these conditions, the active sounded more lively and "vivid." Even the active does not actually have gain (it has a unity gain buffer), but that is usually enough gain for most applications these days.

I think the Placette active is a really nice sounding linestage for the money. My only issue with it has to do with functional concerns. While I like the small steps between volume settings (which is what Placette offers with something like 128 steps), the first step up from off can, in certain systems be too loud, necessitating the use of some other in-line attenuation. Also, I would have preferred having a balance control.

A friend has a passive linestage built around a light sensitive resistor/LED element (like the Lightspeed, though I am not sure of the brand he is using). Like the Placette, that device offers a large number of steps of attenuation. He uses it in an ideal setup (very short interconnects and very high input impedance of the amplifier that it feeds). I really like the sound of that linestage. However, we did an informal comparison with a VERY good active tube linestage and found it a touch less dynamic, particularly at lower volumes; that seems to be the story with ALL the passives I've heard. The best in this respect are the transformer passives. I bet that the advantage of those devices is that, instead of attenuating by wasting energy as heat, a transformer converts the voltage to current when stepping down voltage for lower volume. My problem with transformer passives has to do with the few steps offered--it always seems to be the case that the desired volume is between adjacent steps.