Are passive preamps better?

FWIW, because of Johns comments, I must say that I've used passive's with tube amps and can't say that I ever found anything about them that made them preferrable to a good active amp.

Its too easy to lose the sources dynamics because of poor matching of cables and IC's with a passive, and like every thing else in the hobby, everything between the source and speakers is either additive or subtractive. There ain't anything that is just neutral to the source, if for no other reason that you can never know what the source sounds like with out adding equipment to decode the contents of the recording. Doesn't that initial playback equipment define neutrality.

Has anyone actually listened to the recording over the studios playback system to get a fix on what it should sound like? Perhaps a recording engineer might, or some one at the recorded event might, beable to rely on aural memories if they actually heard it, but I doubt it

I doubt that anybody would recognize 'true neutrality to the source' in audio equipment so why not add an active pre-amp to those things one might use to dial in their version of neutrality or replication of the sound of a 'live' or 'close to live' event. Do what sounds good/realistic/neutral to you! Thats what everybody else is doing. Even the guys that wear hair shirts, even though they would proclaim otherwise! :-)

BTW, I failed to note in my post above, I have been using a Wadia direct to an amp and one thing has become clear from my experimenting with it thru a passive and active line stage. The active line stage was additive and the passive was subtractive (better or worse is not the issue as that depends on the tonal/sonic quality preferences of the listener). If the synergy is right for you, and you're into digital this could be the way to go.

Probably obvious and redundant for most here. FWIW.

Sure. Especially when you match most tube pre-amps with SS amps. One must be careful to make sure the pre-amps output impedence is sufficiently low to properly drive SS amps which often have low imput impedences.

I've always wondered, when discussing passive pre-amps, with and withoput transformers, what is the effect of a passive pre-amp without transformers, which has a varible output impedence from 50K ohms to near 0 ohms at max volume rotation, a point where it should be, for all pratical purposes invisible to amp? How does the sources output interact with the passive pre in relationship to the passives output, or does it? I've never understood any of this. Is it meaningful at all?

Does a passive with transformers present a constant output impedence to the amp? Is it affected by the sources impedence?

Or are these just meaningless questions?