OK experts and one's who hold such knowledge, lets see if I understand?
1-an active preamp = a preamp
(in the old school way it can produce some big juice)
2- a passive preamp = a linestage
(could be called a buffer/needs to push very little juice cause its mostly used for CD, 2 volts and that is easily pushed up by a passive-linestage type of device)
3- the TVC = a passive preamp that uses a passive volume controll.
4- the passive preamp in my integrated amp = a linestage (or passsive preamp) with a active volume controll an Alps.
is this correct, what gets confusing in audio to me is there are many things that are referred to by at least 2 terms that mean the same thing.
for instance when changing tubes in my integrated amp's, preamp (at which time I thought was a traditional preamp) I got confused when the people helping me referred to input tubes and driver tubes, I started calling the input tubes preamp tubes which was really making them and me confused.
Had I realised this was a passive device (essentially when compared to a old school traditional preamp) I might have not started using the term preamp tube cause there really is no preamp, correct? It seems the term today in integrateds anyway is just a hold over from the days of tape loop, very low efficancy speakers and on board phono stages?
