Placette Passive Owners...

I had an interesting experience taking the Placette out of my system and inserting into another system, between a CDP with volume control and a power amp. Interestingly, no matter how much gain (up to 4 v) we fed the Placette from the CDP, we could barely get any level out of the speakers. Upon further review we found a couple of differences between my system and the other system - the other power amp had a less friendly input impedance, and the speakers were far less efficient (though very good!) than mine. I guess my experiment confirms what was said above, and in some other A'Gon threads - passives are extremely sensitive to downstream cables and components.

Howie, the power amp was a Classe Omega Reference, and yes it went from a previously balanced connection to single ended. I forgot to mention that bit in my original post. I am still a little surprised that the performance of the Placette would differ that significantly in another system.

Howie, the cables were short - 1.5 m Cardas Neutral Reference, actually the ones from my system. At the time we wondered if the difference in speaker sensitivity (94 db in my system, 88 db in his) wasn't somehow involved, in that could the amp's actual input impedance in his system be lower than nominal? Even as we approached unity gain, the system never got that loud.