Active speakers with passive pre

[john dolan]

Hi guys im thinking of buying some little Genelec 8040 and im hoping they will work ok with my AS Passion passive so was wondering if anyone here has used a passive pre with actives and how well it worked if you did.

The Genelecs are balanced unput so id make a cable rca one end and balanced the other.

I do also own a M-dac so I know I could use that and go fully balanced if I need to but I would prefer to use my Young dac which is rca and doesn't have on board volume control and I also have 2 analogue sources so I would prefer to use my passive preamp.

[DSJR]

This is purely my opinion and not fully based in any measurable fact, but I feel that longer interconnects driving remote modern solid state amp are better served by a good simple line driver/buffer designed for the job. Transformer couplers offer more distortion (maybe nice sounding ones?) and may be perfect for many applications, but the Genelecs have been designed around provable science, not personal subjective audiophile opinion, if you see where I'm respectfully going on this, and if my long experiences with ATC actives was anything to go by, a proper line driver would not ever get in the way of the sources you use, although any colourations or compression in the music and/or sources would be ruthlessly revealed as such (neither of my active ATC's (20ASL pros and earlier, some beloved 100A's could handle severely compressed music).

At the very least, please consider something like this - http://www.thomann.de/gb/spl_volume_2_black.htm Loads of others similar as well as suitable DACs with proper variable line outs (maybe one of the StanDac's would also be perfect and of course the Benchmark models, either being less 'HiFi' than the M-DAC is reputed to be in non PFM circles - cough -)

Good luck in your journey. A read-up of some pro gear (Sound-On-Sound is a good place to start) may help with adjusting to the way pros tend to do things (not always right I assure you but much of it is extremely sensible IMO).

Hope this helps and doesn't hinder.

[john dolan]

Thanks for your reply Dave.

I can use my M-dac with its balanced outs and on board volume np but I wanted to use my Passion passive preamp with my Young dac and also because I want to use my Gyrodec also a FM tuner and the M-dac is digital only so I would need to buy a adc.

I play lossless flac rips and high res files and mostly listen to opera so no compressed music.

[Techno Commander]

If you are thinking of using mini pro monitors, take a good listen to some Adams. The A7x (http://www.absolutemusic.co.uk/adam-a7x-glossy-black-studio-monitoring-bundle.html) are a similar price and are stunningly good. I find the Genelecs a little "gratey" with their presentation.

[john dolan]

I will be buying new blind and just prefer the look of the Genelecs and the have 30 day return if not happy so cant lose really.