Any thoughts on removing a preamp from your system

It may be that active preamps often sound better.

The next question would be: why?

Synergy is always a consietation. Why would a good passive mated well be any lesser than with an active pre? Easier to mate correctly perhaps due to voltage and impedance matching? If that is done right, what secret ingredient is still missing?

There is usually a reason why some things work better than others.

Of course if a sub 1k passive can compete with the best active pres as some claim, that would be a significant thing.

Never considered passives and have only used actives or integrateds. I read a lot online and the guys praising passives are not that many. And direct to ampers always seems to lead back to using a preamp again.

YEs, but the question is, why?

I can see how the proper eletronic mating might be trickier with a passive, but I cant see a disadvantage if done right, other than that various active pres might provide more flavors of sound to please more people. Not everyone likes vanilla best.

passives have components that can also change the sound such as pots, resistors, transformers, internal wiring. Also except for transformer type passives there impedance changes with volumn setting. As I said before the Sonic Euphoria autotransformer based passive was the best passive I ever used but it had no where near the resolving power of my Shindo. You simply have to try with your own equipment
Alan

I had a good experience some years ago in my sunroom system.

I ran a Mark Levinson 390s cd player directly into a Pass Aleph 3 amp, driving a pair of ProAc 1SCs. Supplemented at the low end with a REL subwoofer. Cardas Golden Cross interconnects and biwire speaker wire. The system sounded great.

The ML 390s had an analog volume control that preserved the detail of the music and it also had a digital input for another component that could be switched in. No preamp needed.

Another combo that worked for me was a bedroom system. My sources were a SAE 8000 fm tuner and a Sony disc player. I used a passive Promethius preamp that used a transformer for volume control, and this fed a Carver M-500t amp connected to a pair of Thiel 3.6s. Not expecting too much, I was surprised at the smoothness and dynamics of the setup. Not having an active preamp did not seem a problem.

One thing I have noticed is that most of my line level sources have more than enough voltage to play quite loudly through my amps. Most of the time, my active preamps are just attenuating the signal. Very rarely do I ever play music so loudly that I feel the preamp is actually amplifying the signal. If I lived in an apartment or someplace close to neighbors, I would never play so loudly.