You'll get pro and con advice on what will sound best, and if your gear looks promising as regards Abstract7's very sensible comments, I'd advise getting a few Holco resistors and four female RCA connectors and putting together a series of fixed attenuation networks to approximate a passive preamp at a setting you can use with some source material. This assumes you can solder, that's all. If you want details on the attenuation network, use "Member Lookup" to contact me and I'll supply them. It's very easy, and you can see for yourself whether you lose dynamics or suffer from whatever else the active preamp fans will warn about.