I long been ana active pre-amp man and have enjoyed owning a Croft 25 which I paired with a Quad 909 and the combination really sang.
Going Active (speaker wise) I kept up stream the same, SBT, M-DAC and the Croft. but was curious to see how taking the Croft out affected the sound, to my surprise it didn't make a huge differnence given the same pre had a profound positive impact in my passive set up. A little tonal 'body' colouration was lost in favour of transparency.
This led me to trying the tiny and cheap as chips Tisbury in place and this was a marginal improvment over the M-DAC on volume duty and then the more expensive Icon Audio passive which was again another step up in performancre sounding a little more effortless.
I'm now pretty set on getting myself a permanenet passive solution and have become very interested in the LDR variations, a DIY favourite called the Lighspeed looks very interesting but I'd like a remote control which has led me to the one I think I'll go for from an American company called Tortuga, although this is a fair bit more expensive.
Another I've looked at is from Poland called Hattor and is a fancy version from the same makers of Khomzo. Eva2 is another LDR variation which does have a remote, Django which is more a DIY gets good reviews.
I think if you have the required spec in terms of input and output for a passive they offer terrific resolution and performance from very good pricepoints. I do still love what an active pre can bring but given I don't need the gain being all digital at the moment passives are for me. I used to have a pre-conception passives sapped dynamics, dynamics and drive as I have expeinced that but iyt is far from universal.
So what passies have you guys used, enjoyed, compared? Have you had great results or less inpsiring ones because I know passives can sound terrible when used in an inapropaie system.
Going Active (speaker wise) I kept up stream the same, SBT, M-DAC and the Croft. but was curious to see how taking the Croft out affected the sound, to my surprise it didn't make a huge differnence given the same pre had a profound positive impact in my passive set up. A little tonal 'body' colouration was lost in favour of transparency.
This led me to trying the tiny and cheap as chips Tisbury in place and this was a marginal improvment over the M-DAC on volume duty and then the more expensive Icon Audio passive which was again another step up in performancre sounding a little more effortless.
I'm now pretty set on getting myself a permanenet passive solution and have become very interested in the LDR variations, a DIY favourite called the Lighspeed looks very interesting but I'd like a remote control which has led me to the one I think I'll go for from an American company called Tortuga, although this is a fair bit more expensive.
Another I've looked at is from Poland called Hattor and is a fancy version from the same makers of Khomzo. Eva2 is another LDR variation which does have a remote, Django which is more a DIY gets good reviews.
I think if you have the required spec in terms of input and output for a passive they offer terrific resolution and performance from very good pricepoints. I do still love what an active pre can bring but given I don't need the gain being all digital at the moment passives are for me. I used to have a pre-conception passives sapped dynamics, dynamics and drive as I have expeinced that but iyt is far from universal.
So what passies have you guys used, enjoyed, compared? Have you had great results or less inpsiring ones because I know passives can sound terrible when used in an inapropaie system.
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