Placette Active Linestage preamplifier Page 2  The effects of
the Placette's focus and clarity were easy to trace to
individual performers—if I tried to do so—or to minute details
in the recording environment. Small and low-level details were
sometimes more obvious with other preamps, however, which could
give simply recorded live performances more energy and life. I
noted that, with Townes Van Zandt's performance of his "Pancho
and Lefty" on the benefit concert recording Steve Earle/Townes
Van Zandt/Guy Clark Together at the Bluebird Café (CD, American
Originals SDPCD161), the Sutherland DLS infused the sound with
an immediacy that better captured the live feel of the
performance. Another example was Steve Forbert's Be Here Now:
Solo Live 1994 (CD, Rolling Tide); other top-flight preamps
often portrayed how Forbert's head and mouth interacted with the
microphone in a more obviously live way than did the Active
Linestage.  It was difficult to apply other audiophile criteria
to the Placette's reproduction of s