My comments on voodoo are just that some believe that an active preamp can actually add real musical information that the source isn't providing, this shatters me that some can believe this.
You won't get any argument out of me on this! I am of the opinion though that passives *loose* detail, not that actives *add* it...
I also agree that if you can get by will less gain, so much the better. So we do offer or preamps with no gain in the line stage, just our direct coupled tube output, which has no gain driven by the volume control.
However:
We have had pretty good luck with getting low noise without removing the gain stage in the preamp, even on speakers of that efficiency (we have customers using speakers that are 107db), which is why it is obvious that preamp gain is *not* the problem! **If it were, hiss would be the complaint, not buzz!**
I feel like I did not put enough emphasis on that last sentence but I don't want to yell :)