Well, I was going to reply to each of your points but thought it would be easier to summarise:
1. I think you're wrong about the degradation issue - *any* component in the signal path causes degradation/distortion. Fact. It may be insignificant and inaudible, but it's still there. Non-linearity is *not* the only possible source of degradation with a passive device. There is also noise, interaction with source and power amp (RLC circuits) etc. 2. You're comparing good quality passive devices to average, consumer-oriented active devices and then saying passive is better than active. That's misleading. It would be more correct to state that passive pre-amps are often better than cheaper active pre-amps. 3. I'm not sure what sort of kit you've been listening to but certainly any pre-amp that produces compression and distortion is certainly not something I'd consider "hi-fi". It's certainly not inherent in pre-amp designs - it's usually a result of cheap components and poorly designed tone control circuitry. Case in point: I took the tone controls out of circuit on a Rotel RA820A and the difference in sound was vast. And this on an amp that is supposed to have a tone bypass function - it just didn't work very well. Don't get me wrong - I understand the issues involved with passive pre-amps and how they can potentially offer good performance - but I think you're mis-representing the case against actives. A good active will not contain a whole load of circuitry, but will instead simply incorporate a high-performance buffer circuit to provide high input impedance and low output impedance. These are well understood building blocks and any designer worth his salt can produce a good circuit that doesn't have compression and distortion "inherent in the design. R. _______________________________________________ audiophiles mailing list [email protected] http://lists.slimdevices.com/lists/listinfo/audiophiles
