If you do not need buffering to match source, ICs, to amp, I would expect the RVC to be a better choice, but many systems do need some buffering, especially if you run long ICs, and in that setting the Active would be preferable - so nothing inherent to either independent of system context . I agree that a balance control would have been nice (I owned both) - I good alternative would be the BENT Tap-X (which I also owned), which also has the benefit of volume control and does address impedance matching in a way the RVC can't, and much cheaper than the active. In a proper system, I would choose the Lightspeed Attenuator over any of them (though it does lack balance control).
