dumb question about gain and preamps

Yes.

Regards,
-- Al

A subtle distinction..."Unity gain" means that the VOLTAGE out is the same as the voltage in. The output impedance, which you might call the "strength" of the signal, is usually much lower. That's the purpose of a unity gain output stage

the only dumb question is the one not asked!

pardon any redundancies...

Is it possible to have gain without distortion to the signal, asked another way, is a preamp without gain less distorted assuming similar quality attentuators? Or asked another way, can active amp be more accurate than a passive assuming to impedance matching issues?

Pubul57 -- I would put it that an active gain stage (which as you realize is required if gain is to be greater than one) will inevitably have at least some tiny amount of various kinds of distortion, and a passive preamp will inevitably have at least some tiny amount of impedance matching issues.

But good design of the active stage, and proper application of a passive preamp (short cable lengths, high input impedance of the component it is driving, etc.) will in both cases make the issues audibly insignificant based on known science.

Which does not necessarily mean that they will sound the same, given for instance the claims by many audiophiles that audible differences can be perceived even between different brands of high quality resistors, between different orientations of the fuses in the back of the equipment, etc.

While I would consider some (but certainly not all) such claims to be not well founded (translation: nonsense), it seems clear that known science and known forms of distortion cannot explain everything about the differences we hear between audio components.

Regards,
-- Al