Modern Linestages

I am still only slightly foolish when it comes to cables and power cords

As for me: cables- slightly foolish
power cords- more than slightly foolish...

just how stiff a power supply does a line stage need?

I have zero knowledge about circuit design but I do not think that that is the case.

Active preamps are to me a dinosaur left over from the analogue days, when one needed an riaa stage in the preamp and then another gain stage to get the voltage up to the input sensitivity of the poweramps they were to drive.
Today's sources cd, tuners, ipods, phono stages. etc: have enough output to drive the poweramps directly even into overdrive.
So all that's needed is an attenuator between them to attenuate the level, there is no need for active preamps with gain stages as there is no gain needed between today's sources and poweramps.

Cheers George

George, I Agee that todyas sources do not "need" active gain stages BUT many do sound better than passives. I've been a BIG fan of passives over the last couple of years and have used them to great effect (but never tried yours sorry to say) but until I listened to the Steve McCormick VRE-1B I didn't know what I was missing. No passive has ever given me the 3-D effect I hear from this line stage (it has only 6db of gain). I'm not saying it's accurate because who really knows what accurate is? It just let's me enjoy music like no other active or passive has ever done. Yes my Kondo M1000 pre (over $100,000) was very special but the VRE puts a smile on my face every night I listen, and that's what its all about at the end of the day.
Steve
"dealer disclaimer"

In theory a passive linestage "should" be all that`s needed with the higher output sources use these days. The reality is however in "most" systems a good active linestage simply sounds more complete and life-like, there`s more "there".

I have zero knowledge too but my guess is that power supply is always very important, be it phono stage, line level preamp or power amp. And this is probably not cheap or easy to really get it right.