A friend has a passive linestage built around a light sensitive resistor/LED element (like the Lightspeed, though I am not sure of the brand he is using). Like the Placette, that device offers a large number of steps of attenuation. He uses it in an ideal setup (very short interconnects and very high input impedance of the amplifier that it feeds). I really like the sound of that linestage. However, we did an informal comparison with a VERY good active tube linestage and found it a touch less dynamic, particularly at lower volumes; that seems to be the story with ALL the passives I've heard. The best in this respect are the transformer passives. I bet that the advantage of those devices is that, instead of attenuating by wasting energy as heat, a transformer converts the voltage to current when stepping down voltage for lower volume. My problem with transformer passives has to do with the few steps offered--it always seems to be the case that the desired volume is between adjacent steps.
