Preamp Noise with High-Efficiency Speakers

To his credit although Atmasphere (Ralph) is a manufacturer, with a vested interest in his own gear, I find his responses to be intelligent and open-minded.
George is basically insisting that his way is the only way- and that is just wrong.
FWIW, I experimented with bypassing the line stage and running directly from a phono pre into the amps (It was a Steelhead, which has more circuitry than a stand-alone passive pre, but the overall concept is similar and I've since replaced it with something a little more antiquarian, using LCR and transformers, along with old telephony tubes, which to my ear sounds better). Although the bandwidth was great, bass to die for, the presentation sounded threadbare and very 'hi-fi.' Introducing a good line stage into the mix added a level of heft and palpability that I associate with real instruments. Changing line stages last year upped the ante even more -going from the Lamm L2 to the Veloce (Lithio or version 2). Piano is a hard instrument to reproduce. For years, we had a big Bosendorfer downstairs. I know what a real piano sounds like. It's a beoytch to reproduce, and beyond the gear is the quality of the recording, how the instrument is miked, how the record is mastered, etc.
So much is source and system dependent, and so many other variables make up a system, I just can't buy into 'my way or the highway' approach to hi-fi.
Sorry George, you've lost me on this thread.

Knghifi and Whart,
This improved weight,heft,palpability,3D,dynamics,vividness you hear, well you guys just like pleasant colorations.Never mind that it sounds closer to live instruments,doesn`t matter. If you don`t hear it as george does,you`re wrong. Why is that so hard for you guys to understand.Grannyring and Knghifi(and others) purchased his passive and preferred their active preamp,wrong choice guys.Why be silly and choose the component that sounds more realistic,who wants that anyway?

Charles- I'm open to learning, considering other approaches and contributing where I can. I can also enjoy a good debate, but after too many years on the intraweb, don't have any interest in sniping, at George or anybody else. I enjoy (and enjoy sharing) the excitement of discovery, the fundamentals of 'best practices' in set-up, the detective work of trouble shooting (not easy in void of hyperspace) and fiddling with tweaks that don't cost a fortune. I also enjoy hearing from others who consider this an adventure. There are many here that seem to approach things the same way- they don't discount novel or antiquarian approaches ( although there may be some legitimate skepticism); but, at bottom, folks here are often willing to jump in and spend real time, thought and energy to help somebody troubleshoot a problem or answer a question. (I've certainly benefitted from that over the years here).
As somebody put it in relation to a discussion about the sonic differences among various pressings of the same record, it is still more art than science in a lot of ways, even though sound engineering principles should underlie what we do.
I'm not dumping on George, but find the endless drum beat to be monotonous, and ultimately, counterproductive, at least for me.

Wow, so much fight after just one day! George and Charles, we've already known you are big fans of passive pre or source-direct, but at the end of the day, some of us will turn on an active preamp and some will go preamp-less. Who gets more fun out of music/audio is impossible to determine.

I recently found my iFi iUSB Power supply a great tool to charge my cell phone --- faster than my Samsung Note II's own wall-wart power supply. Yes it cost $199 plus shipping thus qualifies the most expensive cell phone charger I ever use. But I had more fun using it to charge my cell phone than to power my USB DAC ---- I was smiling ear to ear watching this little audio gem charging a cell phone (silly, I know). Anything wrong with that? Can you guys find me a passive cell phone charger that works better?

Yingtonggao's problem was too much system gain with his 104db speakers. As the low gain Cary poweramps seems to have now fixed.

The cheapest way I suggested in one of my first posts a removal of gain by either going direct or the use of a passive, mine or anyones, and that colouration may also be reduced, and that Nelson Pass also recommends this. *Below is is quote again*

It was just couple of others here that started the passive vs active debate.

*A Quote from the master Nelson Pass
We’ve got lots of gain in our electronics. More gain than some of us need or want. At least 10 db more.
Think of it this way: If you are running your volume control down around 9 o’clock, you are actually throwing away signal level so that a subsequent gain stage can make it back up.Routinely DIYers opt to make themselves a “passive preamp” - just an input selector and a volume control.
What could be better? Hardly any noise or distortion added by these simple passive parts. No feedback, no worrying about what type of capacitors – just musical perfection.
And yet there are guys out there who don’t care for the result. “It sucks the life out of the music”, is a commonly heard refrain (really - I’m being serious here!). Maybe they are reacting psychologically to the need to turn the volume control up compared to an active preamp.*

Cheers George