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George wrote:

Recently I had a brainstorm (very small) and bounced it off Guy (who is a terrific person to talk to) and he thought it would be worth trying. Since I was driving such a relatively long length of RCA cable (thus subject to noise pickup) I thought why not run the Active with no attenuation (full strength signal) and put a passive Placette right next to each amp. Actually I bought RCA male/male couplers and plugged the Placette right into the amp.

Well, the Placette active does not really cares if you have any attenuation before it as it runs I’m sure, in class A1 and full-opened anyhow. The only reasons why it “might be” useful to put attenuation it the power amp input is to implement current loading of that 8 meters interconnect. Some cable (most all of them) response to current loading very positively. This all should lead Guy to think in the direction that he should make power amp input kits. This kit might have a pair of his passive attenuators and a common for both channel IR detector and switching processor. You see, George, in what you propose I see a problem. Sine you have 8 meters interconnects I presume that it a relatively large room with speakers positioned relatively far. This way your common remote control will drive two Placette passive units located a few meter away.  I think it is perfectly possible (since it is it IR control) that one of the sensors will not pick the signal right the way and you have unintentional balance between the channels set off….so, they both should be driven form a common sensor…. That will make to run another 2 x 8 meters cables… sure it is all accomplishable…. How much are you wiling to pay… just to try?  :-)

George wrote:

Note that I have inverted the usual order of attenuation then output to output then attenuation. Guy told me this has no disadvantages and should in my case increase the signal/noise ratio. This also allows the the sources to see the constant impedance of the Active and allows the strong outputting Active to drive the Passives which don't have to drive very much at all.

Actually I very much disagree with you and with Guy on it. if you have buffer and then, right after it the attenuator, then it defeats all purpose, from my point of view.

George wrote:

If I had known of this setup originally I could have bought an active output unit without the volume control stage from Guy and then simply added two passives at not too much more than the standard Active. If I still like this setup after 6 months I will probably sell my Active and replace it as stated just to simplify things.

There are some disadvantages in what you propose. However, you do not use multi-amping, have the ONLY one source and have the ONLY one amp then it might be OK. Still, to my ears, even with 1M cable the Placette active sound better then Placette passive. The Placette passive has that “sleepy sound” that all passive preamps do… A few years ago I took 3 meter cable, drove it from BiDat (direct coupled with 38R output impedance) and begin to slice the cable, soldering the very same 3 db voltage divider at the begins on the cable AND then  at different locations of the cable length. The result was absolutely unambiguous: each single inch of cable AFTER THE DIVIDER made Sound more and more inept…

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