Passive Preamp Recommendations?

If you go passive, and AS LONG AS NUMBERS JIVE (in/out impedances, voltage sensitivities, interconnect length/capacitance,etc).....Lightspeed.

There is a Placette that popped up on the Club Polk website for $600.

I've tried many passives over the years, including Bent TVC and autoformer, Lightspeed, and both passive and active Placette. Then I tried the Music First Baby Reference. It's head and shoulders above the rest, at least in my system and one other I tried it in. The Placette Active (my first passive, wish I'd hung on to it) was also very good. Actually, all of them were very good, but not at the same level. The Lightspeed is quite a bargain. The passives from Tortuga look promising.

I use short interconnects only (1.5M at most).

I have tried a number of active pre-amps and do "get" the argument for them, yet I love the transparency of passives. Actives I've tried from Ayre, Rowland and Klyne have all been major disappointments. I think you must have to spend a lot more, and I haven't done that. A Gamut preamp I had when I had a Gamut power amp was superb. The First Sound I had many years ago was quite wonderful, but didn't offer remote. Your mileage may vary.

In my experience, passives with Stevens & Billington transformers are very nice. The Money (oops, sorry), Music First Audio preamps are exceptional. That's quite a claim you make about the Baby Reference, Drubin. I'd love to hear one in my system to do an A-B. I only have experience with their copper (which is the classic, I think), and Silver models.

The Goldpoint SMD resistor passive and Endler Audio Stepped Attenuators I have here display a purity of sound that is very nice at first, but as time goes on you realize there is a level of dynamics and tonal density missing, compared to active preamps. Resistor based passives are also quite sensitive to impedance matching and can sound terrible in the wrong set-up.

Transformer and autoformer passives are said to resist this trend, and can even provide 6dB of gain. The Music First Audio preamps fall into this category.

I have to agree with those who like buffered passive preamps since the buffering helps prevent losses from long interconnects and impedance mismatches, and seems to restore dynamics and tonal color. My McCormack TLC-1 has been completely tricked out by SMc audio and is essentially a buffered passive that achieves 6dB of gain through Lundahl output transformers. This is the best preamp I have heard out of many, including several approaching or exceeding $10K.