Atamasphere's points are well taken and basically boil down to the fact that many source components are not capable of properly driving the cables, passive control, and the input to the amp while at the same time resulting in enough overall system gain. However, if they can drive the load and you don't need the gain, why would you want to introduce more active stages into the signal path if you don't have to? The point most people miss in this discussion is that an active line stage also contains some form of passive volume control. Usually a potentiometer but can also be a stepped attenuator or transformer though the latter is rare.
The bottom line is that it is much, much easier to get an active stage to integrate into your system. They generally have a higher input impedance and lower output impedance than a passive unit which makes life easier. Each passive will have a different input and output impedance which will interact with the output and input impedances of your source and amp and dramatically affect the sound making finding a good match more difficult. If your other components are up to the task given the caveats above and you are able to sort through the myriad of choices I think a passive is the clear choice.
Atamasphere is correct that most people will get better results from and active, but that is becuase their system aren't properly integrated without one and they have too much gain. My position is simply this, a properly designed SYSTEM will have the fewest number of active components needed to get the required gain. Adding more simply to buffer the volume control will always result in degredation.
The output of my phono stage is designed have enough drive for a passive. The gain of it and my amp are more than enough to drive my speakers to very high volumes if desired. My setup permits the luxury of relatively short interconnects. It would be silly to introduce another gain stage.
I am currently auditioning both and agree that the resistive controls sound better at higher settings, but if you have so much gain that you must operate at the lower settings then you need to change something anyway as the overall gain of the active stages is too much for your speakers. At lower volumes I prefer the transformer units but since I don't listen much at those levels I am now leaning toward resistive.
The bottom line is that it is much, much easier to get an active stage to integrate into your system. They generally have a higher input impedance and lower output impedance than a passive unit which makes life easier. Each passive will have a different input and output impedance which will interact with the output and input impedances of your source and amp and dramatically affect the sound making finding a good match more difficult. If your other components are up to the task given the caveats above and you are able to sort through the myriad of choices I think a passive is the clear choice.
Atamasphere is correct that most people will get better results from and active, but that is becuase their system aren't properly integrated without one and they have too much gain. My position is simply this, a properly designed SYSTEM will have the fewest number of active components needed to get the required gain. Adding more simply to buffer the volume control will always result in degredation.
The output of my phono stage is designed have enough drive for a passive. The gain of it and my amp are more than enough to drive my speakers to very high volumes if desired. My setup permits the luxury of relatively short interconnects. It would be silly to introduce another gain stage.
I am currently auditioning both and agree that the resistive controls sound better at higher settings, but if you have so much gain that you must operate at the lower settings then you need to change something anyway as the overall gain of the active stages is too much for your speakers. At lower volumes I prefer the transformer units but since I don't listen much at those levels I am now leaning toward resistive.