Curious that Bascom didn't mention another engineering fact of passives, that of their output impedance. The output impedance of passives varies with the setting of the volume control, often to a figure too high for the input impedance of some power amps. Also, interconnects must be kept short between passive pre and power, so mono amps behind the speakers are out. And if you want to bi-amp your speakers, that is not possible with many passives.
I used to think passive preamps were superior to active preamps given right the setup, but
my recent evaluation of a modded old SS preamp has me a little befuddled. I've evaluated $10K+ active preamps in the past and was never impressed especially given their cost. In general, I've found passives to do better job. I know there's ongoing debate on this. But here's a very illuminating video on the subject by Bascom King, one of the legends of high end audio.
https://youtu.be/HHl8F9amyY4
https://youtu.be/HHl8F9amyY4