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In Reply to: RE: Aunt Corey's Homemade Buffered Passive Preamplifier posted by Leo loves music on November 07, 2024 at 02:02:02
It doesn't matter if it has no gain, less gain, unity gain, or lots of gain. The fact that there's an active component in the audio signal path that requires power to operate makes it an active circuit.
There are true passive linestages that allow the user to optionally engage an active buffer on the output but these also operate in TRUE passive mode when the buffer stage is not used.
Schiit makes several such products.
As an aside, that Aunt Corey thingy looks ancient and you can probably do better with many modern op-amps, or just a decent Volume Pot if you want a true passive linestage.
Follow Ups:
modern? yes. better? not necessary. remember cost reduction.
Why modern opamp no more class A?
1. They are too expensive to make.
2. They are too hot.
3. They consume too much power.
How does BUF03 sound?
To be honest I used BUF03 before. I think they sounded great especially vocal voices. End of story.
I think they 'sound' very good. I own a Horn Shoppe 'The Truth' line stage which uses BUF 03's. When I got it years ago I could hear what it did right with regard to transparency and detail. But in my system it lacked the dynamics of the tube preamp I was using, so it sat on a shelf most of the time.
Every so often I'd put it back in the system 'just to see'. I did exactly that after buying my PS Audio Stellar phono stage, and the sound was detailed, transparent, but also, there were the dynamics I had been looking for.
It turns out that the PS Audio Stellar has a rather high output voltage, and I was now using The Truth's photo cell volume control to actually attenuate the input signal, rather than feeling 'like I was driving with my foot to the floor' as Nelson Pass said in is B1 article. The Truth has been in my system ever since.
When Geshelli Labs was building my J2 DAC, I asked if the output voltage could be increased from its (I believe it's) 2V output. Geno built my J2 to output 4 volts, and dynamics weren't an issue with my BUF 03 based Truth.
My experience is that if musical dynamics are important to you, and you're considering a line stage without gain, be sure your sources have enough output voltage or you may experience, "they suck the life out of the music", which is another quote from Nelson Pass' B1 article.
Similar experience here. Passives (even with a buffer) can suck the life out of the music unless the source component is especially 'dynamic', in my case with a 'hot' output signal higher than most sources. Otherwise, I'm better off with a linestage with gain.I had the Cary CD 306/200 that was known to be very 'dynamic' and 'robust' along with its higher than usual output voltage. This CDP worked well with my Placette Passive driving an amp that didn't require a lot of signal for full output. That same passive with some other components was lifeless to almost anemic.
Edits: 11/09/24 11/09/24
These buffers don't suck in my design. The sound is very dynamic.
Edits: 11/09/24
I didn't say your buffer sucks. But in my experience a preamp with some gain actually sounds better in most cases to me.
As an aside I've owned a handful of passives and some with the ability engage a unity gain output buffer. Some were better than others but I went back to preamps with some gain. They seem to be more dynamic or alive to my ears. Your preference and YMMV. There's no right answer.
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