To be Passive or to Not be Passive that is the Question?
So my set up at present has a Tisbury passive pre-amp which I originally purchased when setting up my system with a Project Xperience 2 deck, and Meridian 508 CD player and using a Meridian 557 power amp. At the time it was a cost effective solution, and in my mind I thought that at a later stage I would possibly replace the Tisbury with a powered pre-amp. Since then I have upgraded to the Renaissance RA01 tube mono-blocks and invested in the Gyrodec, SME arm and LFD Phono. I left the Tisbury in place as once again it seemed the most neutral part of the chain.
However in recent weeks I have been given the opportunity to test at home a powered pre-amp, and I was hoping this might be an improvement but after several listens with 10 carefully selected tracks I found i did not like the result, and in fact thought it was a step backwards. I have been told that there are benefits of a powered pre-amp over passive one and visa versa. I would be interested in others views and any advise on this subject would be great?
Thanks
Adrian