What's the deal with passives?

[organ]

I don't get it. I keep going back to my transformer based ASL passive pre.

Why does it always handle dynamics so good, especially the mids and highs. Compared to ALL my active pre amps, the passive seems to have so much more headroom.

I understand the whole 'darker' background thing, but technically, shouldn't passives be inferior in headroom and dynamics compared to active pre amps. One thing I noticed is that every active pre amp I've heard makes everything 'loud'. Even at lower volume levels they can't be as gentle as my passive. Much easier to tell on a side by side comparison. The passive has more body too.

I'm so confused:confused:

[Face]

It's system dependent.

Passives sound fine with my gainclones and a few other misc. amps. But with my Pass F5, it sounds terrible.

[mhardy6647]

No gain, no impedance matching, but no active components to add noise or color or shift phase or attenuate frequency response.

As long as your source has enough drive for your amplifier, your cables are short and of low capacitance, you should be all set.

A transformer (rather than resistor) volume control is held by many to be the way to go...