I have been having reservations about whether a passive amplifier is the best choice to put in front of a Clari-T. However, everybody that I have asked seems to love their amplifier with the built in volume control without an amplifier in front of it. This leads me to a few possible conclusions.
1) The Clari-T is so clear and detailed that it is really difficult to put anything in front of it that doesn't detract from it. Perhaps the preamp would sound great with a lesser amplifier, but the Clari-T forces a preamp to be maybe better than a preamp can be.
2) It is interesting that the source is not feeding an amplifier section directly but rather an analog to digital converter which then feeds the amplifier. I wonder if this has some magical property about it that negates the typical complaints of passive preamps. I find this idea to be perhaps the most interesting.
3) People really are hearing some negative effects from having just a volume control with no preamp, but the negative effects are not as bad as the negative effects that an active preamp introduces. I really wonder if the Clari-T could be even better with the right active preamp. But I wonder what that preamp would be and how much it would cost.
4) I am not sure if anybody has tried an active preamp straight into a Clari-T without a volume control. I wonder if having two volume controls in the system contributes to the sound degradation.
Steve Deckert on the Decware site has a paper about his preamp. He makes a point that his Zen amps ship with a volume control because his amplifier almost always sounds best that way. Usually when a customer puts a preamp in front of a Zen amplifier the sound degrades. However, he goes on to state that his new preamp will make every Zen amplifier sound better. So, I am naturally curious, if this preamplifer would make a Clari-T sound better. The Decware preamp is $640 which doesn't seem unreasonable if it will make the sound better.
The typical complaints about passive preamplifers are harsher high frequencies, less bass, less drive. Or sometimes simply just not as musical/enjoyable. Nobody has made these complaints of the Clari-T but are these traits not noticed at all as compared to when an Active preamp is placed in front of it.
I am also curious about passive alternatives. FT Audio states that a passive preamplifer should never be just a simple volume control. They have a passive circuit they call an XCoupler that tries fix the impedance mismatch. Ed of the Hornshoppe uses a preamplifier design from Corey Greenberg called a Buffered Passive Preamp. The buffer helps with the impedance mismatch problem. The thing is though the BUF-03 buffer needs power, so I don't know how it can be called a passive.
Does anybody have any thoughts on this issue?
