opaqueice wrote: > > Whether that is going to sound good to you depends on you, the source, > and the power amp, all of which respond non-linearly in various ways... > but I think there can be little argument that - in isolation - nothing > is going to beat a passive attenuator for fidelity.
And there's the hole in your argument - you don't listen in isolation. There's a source and a power amp involved. Also, I have issues with some of the things GeeZa wrote: > I really don't like taking sides in this age-old passive vs. active > debate, but the engineering side is pretty clear. An active device in > a replay chain is going to degrade your signal. Technically, yes. *Any* device in your replay chain will degrade your signal - even a passive device. But the key is what sort of degradation and how audible it is. Comments like this are just provocative: > Whether you can hear it, most of the time probably not, some people > prefer the pumped-up sound of active pre amplification and that's > totally fair and fine. Active pre-amplification does *not* always produce a "pumped-up" sound. An active pre-amp can sound as transparent and neutral as a the designer cares to make it. > It's just there's a lot of crap talked about passives, and the bottom > line is that if you match your kit carefully, they are often a very > cheap, and very very transparent solution. It would also seem that there's a lot of crap talked about actives. However, I agree with the assertion that passives can be very good "if you match your kit carefully". R. _______________________________________________ audiophiles mailing list [email protected] http://lists.slimdevices.com/lists/listinfo/audiophiles
