There is no best of anything in audio, there are only opinions. Passives come in all prices so I would start looking for one in your price range. There are a couple of passives that sell for over $4,000 I think, the three I hear the most about are the silver rock, placette, bent tvc. There was a couple of shoot outs on these over at AA forum and I think there was one here also, I would do a search on both forums. I think these three can be had for between $1000-$2000 depending on options. Adcom has an active/passive pre-amp that is very good and can be found used at around $750. Creek and E.T. audio have good lower priced models that are good at their price point.
