Quote Originally Posted by E-Stat
How about the converse? Let's see if I can make this story short. A couple of years ago, I bought a new CD player to replace a Pioneer unit I've used for about ten years. I decided to use it as the basis of an office system. I already had my trusty '81 Threshold Stasis amp so I purchased some Polk speakers at CC. Next I contemplated a preamp. I was thinking of finding a Dyna PAS-3 for about $100. It was about that time that I read about DIY passive preamps. Which really aren't preamps at all. They're just passive attenuators in a box. So with a little help from a guy at another audio forum, I went to Radio Shack and bought $15 worth of parts and cobbled together this:

Actually, I'm fibbing a little bit about the total cost as the knobs I used were left over from a black faceplate purchase for my ARC preamp. Each knob costs what the entire project cost ! Anyway, I tried it out in my new office system and found it worked fine. Indeed, the gain of the CD was such that while I couldn't fully drive the amp, it would still play at more than adequate levels in the office. Here is where it gets interesting. Just for grins, I took it downstairs and put it on the main system. Here I was comparing my homely $15 unit to a $2500 Audio Research SP-9 MKIII.



It would really be no contest, right? The ARC preamp should easily outperform my cheapo passive. I confess I was very surprised at the results. The passive was clearer and offered a wider image than the preamp. Because the GamuT has a very low impedance / high gain output (75 ohms/4 volt) , it could fully drive the amps through the attenuators so there were no compromises with level. Later, I built another unit with better parts and use that with the CD player today. I use the preamp solely with my vinyl source.

Summary-the results of my sighted comparison was completely opposite from what I expected. How could an Audio Research preamp be bettered by a homemade POS unit that costs the same as one of it's knobs? Are you kidding? I no longer assume anything.

rw
I've found a similar story with my preamp. I use a vintage PS Audio IV preamp that was designed to work both driven, and fully passive. I've compared it to some pretty expensive preamps from Classe; DR-6(SS), and Audio Research; LS-25, and I've found that I like the passive pre the best. I've bought, used, and sold a lot of audio gear in my time but I am keeping my passive pre!