McCormack Micro Line Drive with MF-2550

[rff000]

Somewhere in the early or mid-1990's I bought the McCormack Micro Line Drive from a person working at McCormack. He later upgraded it with much better dials and power supply and I've been using it in passive mode since then. A couple days ago I bought the CJ MF-2550 and I'm using it with the Micro Line Drive. It sounds like a good match. I wonder if most people run the MF-2550 with the preamp in passive or active mode and is it unusual to pair it with the McCormack Micro Line Drive?

I just found an old Steve McCormack article about passive preamps from the 90's, if anyone is interested in this history:
https://hometheaterhifi.com/volume_2_1/passive.html

[admin]

Passive volume control has always been an interesting approach. However, I find that there are very few options out there in the market. I've heard only one or two of these in actual systems over the years and have never found them to be superior (or necessarily inferior) to actively powered preamps. I've seen more people hook up CD players directly to amps as many modern CD players have volume control built in. As to whether this is better/worse,... I don't have the listening experience to say.

Overall, my view is that it surely is unlikely to be vastly superior to traditional active preamps as you would imagine the entire industry would have changed to passive controls if it was that much better. It would also be cheaper to produce those units as you don't have to incorporate power supply components, tubes, etc... Just my two cents.