Placette pre amp

Get the Placette Line Stage, which is active but has no gain. It will give you everything you wanted from a passive without the downsides. If you need gain, he can build it in, but you probably won't need it. This is a tremendous product.

I believe you can try the Placette risk free for 30 days from the manufacturer. Sounds like that might be useful in your situation. Best of luck.

Tim

I have been an advocate of passive preamps for years. I have been using a Stan Warren buffered line stage for about 8 years. I recently upgraded my amp to a CJ MV-60 and was uncertain if I needed to upgrade my preamp. I only run a CD player, so I started to look at options, including a CD player with variable output. Budget is an issue, but not so much if I find a sound that is so wonderful that it sticks in my head and will not leave. I also spoke with Bill Conrad who said that the inteconnects will be an issue with a passive set up because they will act as filters. The CJ and buffered line stage are amazing, even with old Audioquest Ruby interconnects and some prototypes from another manufacturer. I have done ABs with Creek OBH 12 and OBH 14 and EVS Ultimate Attenuators. The issues are ease of use, access to controls and wires too heavy for device, more than sound. In all cases the sound does change, but ever so slightly. So, it becomes a mood thing more than the fact that I cannot live with the sound. The Creek does something to the sound that makes it nicer. I asked Stan Warren about this and he relayed a story of a recent A/B between the Creek OBH 12 and a BAT 20? or 30? at a recent Chicago Audio Society meeting. The outcome? Everyone liked the Creek better, even with a slightly narrower sound stage. I like the Creeks a lot because theys sound good and are more convenient than reaching around the back of a hot amp sitting under a rack. The EVS does nothing to the sound which I like. I A/Bed the EVS versus direct CD-amp. It is a tough call. My recommendation is try the Creek and, as Tim said, the Placette on a risk free basis. The cost of used Creek OBH 12 is risk-free. Besides it has growth potential and you can just put it away for a rainy day. If you are happy with your current CD player, then the better option may be to take the less expensive route until the industry decides what it wants to do with CDs and use the money somewhere else. If you want to go into this in more detail send me an e-mail. Cheers!

I'm the passive folk too but there are certain conditions must meet before you'll get into no-preamp listening. Most of SET and Triode amps have a low sensitivity and will loose a great deal of dynamics when coupled directly with the source. There is one more condition but usually it's the only consearn for solid states which is impedance compatibility. There are a few technical differences that I want to describe as a former engineer:

Triode amps need in average 4...5x higher input voltage than tetrode push-pulls due to a lower gain. If insufficient voltage is applied to the input(lower than offset) the triode enters non-linear operation and will operate with the great deal of distortions(especislly on low volumes)

Tetrodes have their characteristics more linear and usualy more sencitive amplification components. On most of tetrode operated amps the input voltage of .4 volts is enough to drive them. If the specs say that input sencitivity of the tetrode amp is 1.2V and you will drive it with just .4volts on input most-likely you will just loose the rated power of the amplifier with remaining linear non-distorion operation.

To my experience SET and Triode amps should be best driven with 20dB gain amps not excluding the solid state(MOSFET) or hybrid designs.

Creek OBH12 is indeed a nice product for the price and can be a great addition to any non-remote preamp.

Thanks for the input, it's actually been very helpful, especially Marakanetz. I will probably buy the Legend pre and get the Creek OBH 12 or the Placette for the remote volume. I was also thinking about getting the Hovland pre, but will have to look into that further. Thanks again for the input.