consensus on passive preamps?

Simply put, all else being equal, ANY active sytem CANNOT be as TRANSPARENT as passive. If your source output impedence is low, as it should be, speakers sensitivity and amp input senstivity not too low, and listening volume not abusive, your home free. In my experience, these factors rarely add up to a problem but can. Having done alot of experimentation, parts quality makes a big difference. If you're not afraid of a soldering iron, constructing your own is not prohibitive and , of course, puts you in a position of upping parts quality for less money. Stepped ladder attenuators using even low cost 1/8th watt resistors(smaller is better) will blow away the best pot. A few hundred $ in parts and a few hours will blow away ANY "preamp" including the CJ ART; unless you're after additives and colorations, in which case there's no argueing and personal taste rules as always. Why waste money?

Passive? certainly.

Or why not run without a preamp,or even an Amplifier. No Amps? Ooops. No way! Yes. Run the output to a highly sensitive speaker like the avantgarde. Well technically the lows are handled by its built in amplification,the mids and highs by the cd player.
Very weird configuration,but i heard one on demo.

A little late perhaps to jump in on this thread, but I agree with Ultrakaz to some extent. I do like analog volume controls built in to the source component, and have owned many CD players and DACs that allow me to go directly into the amp. I think that any system will sound better without a pre-amp. But the Silver Rock is different. It functions as an isolation transformer, and causes a much blacker background. More details emerge from the music, which is now grainfree and pure. It is the only pre-amp that I will use.

I agree with Glreno, that transformer-based passive attenuators are the way to go. I'm using a DIY Bent Audio TX102, which should be very similar to the Silver Rock (I'd like to know how they actually compare), except that it's a bit more versatile and not quite as expensive.
What I want to point out is, that transformer-based passives don't have any of the drawbacks (impedance matching, requirement for short interconnects) of the resitor-based units and as such they are IHMO the best thing since sliced bread.