Passive Pre-amp: Improves overall sound quality??


Sam Tellig in Stereophile was all jazzed up about a line of "passive pre-amps" he received for review How does a passive pre-amp work?? Is it powered by wall AC?? What are some of the pros and cons of its operation within an audio system??
sunnyjim
Yes a lot has been written about the passive/active debate.

In a nutshell, the math (on which all electronics is based) goes against you when you run a passive system. The Lightspeed is no exception. You can improve the situation slightly by using setups that operate at lower impedances, but then your source has to support that operation, which is not something universal to say the least.

OTOH active line sections with marginal design will be easily beaten by a passive setup. So if you want to boil it down, on the cheap use passive, if you want the best you will have to go active.
Thanks to all have been responded. I have now begun my reschooling in basic electronics.

BTW, Brownsfan: Sam's current wunderlich (I know, bad pun) is the Music First Passive pre-amps. He wants to (again) do away with all active pre-amp because of all the "nasties" they ad to the music. Yes, but at what price and convenience??
If set up correctly, a passive preamp can sound as good or better than the some of the best active preamps out there. In my system, I have a high quality stepped attenuator built into the input section of my amp. Keep the interconnect 6 feet or less from digital source to amp and make sure the input impedance of the amp is at least 10x higher than the output impedance of the source. All digital source these days have enough output voltage to drive most amps to clipping. If you listen to vinyl, it gets more complicated. This is by far the best "Preamp" I've had in my system in 25+ years.
The best preamp I've had in my system is transformer-based and available sometimes for peanuts on ebay.fr:

Search for the Redson RC-1080