Thoughts on Placette Preamps?

I'm not sure how sensitive VK75 is but its input impedance is great to use it with passive preamp like Placette. On your digital end make sure that it can throw some sufficient voltage ~3V with preferably no DC component. Having these conditions met, you can benefit a lot from passive preamp in comparison to active one.

I realy forgot about BAT -- they have either balanced or SE outputs in their regular configuration. Placette has also balanced out versions and I would recommend to stay with one output device either balanced or SE.

In order to take the most advantage of having passive preamp please MEASURE before you build!

Find out an output level of your CD-player with manufacturer or user manuals and sencitivity, input impedance of your amplifier. You have to have +-1V above the input sencitivity of your amplifier for uncompromised dynamics.

For example if your input sencitivity is 1V and the output of your CD-player is 1.5V then you'll most-lilely need extra 7dB of voltage gain and have to avoid using passive preamp.

There is a decibel conversion table you can check at http://www.testeq.com/charts/decibels.lasso

...the only thing you won't do with passive is to couple it with SET tube amp -- the major nonsence!
A little too transparent in straight language means too underdynamic. That is the case when you have output of source less or equal to sencitivity of amplifier. SET amps have extreamly low sencitivity of ~1.9V and have a very low gain ~10dB. It means that you need a good 4V from your source output.
BATs claim to have a different story. I'm 100% sure that they've got much higher input sencitivity and much higher gain. So it's not about tubes or SS in that issue. SS amps might even have a disadvantage of lower input impedance which is much harder to match with passives.