I have not encountered a passive that can drive a high current amp and cables as well as a top tier preamp with a really good VC. As many have stared most commercial units use really poor quality VS's. What people do not understand is that while a line level component may have enough voltage to drive an amp to clipping it is NOT the typical situation at listening levels. Most people only listen at 1 to 5 watts RMS which is a greatly attenuated level. If you think about it in terms of signal level being transmitted across the interconnect we are talking very low signal levels here that are far more sensitive to ground currents, common mode noise, RF noise and impedance reflections. A really good preamp can deal with those issues with supreme transparency whereas almost every passive outside of a TVC seems to be very sensitive to RF which give a slight edgieness that I feel people mistake foe transparency. Larger amps that draw significant currents also are difficult for a passive as the ground loop induced currents have no mechanism to control them being that the output impedance of a passive is extremely poor. Now an amp with a well integrated volume control has some potential though
