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Audiophile Loudness Wars—Too Much again!?

Obviously a huge chunk of popular western music has been involved in the loudness wars of the recording industry. But do we now have Hifi loudness wars? Sometimes I look at or try out new pieces, and think audio designers are putting too much gain in our preamps, amps, and DACs. Or am I off here? You won’t hurt my feelings.
I’m getting a sense that lots of gear falls over the side of center towards higher gain.

Hey, it happens to me! You can’t edit titles. It’s supposed to be “too much gain”.
128x128jbhiller

Showing 2 responses by georgehifi

georgehifi's avatar
georgehifi
10,312 posts
 
Get an inline stereo attenuator; then, just adjust it to get the reduction in gain that you’re looking for.

And use it instead for the volume control, and get rid of the unnecessary gain, noise, and distortion, introducing active preamp.

Cheers George
georgehifi's avatar
georgehifi
10,312 posts
 
Audiophile Loudness Wars—Too Much again!?

Best to remedy this is to use a dac that has inbuilt (digital domain at or above 75% level) gain control if you have one. If used below 75% volume you run the risk of "bit stripping" detail away.

And if your dac has no volume control, nothing worse for signal to noise ratio and final distortion, than heavily knocking back the "dacs output level" with an active pre because the active preamp or amp has too much gain

That’s why passive pre’s are the best and least colored, great if impedance matching between input to output is observed to be no less than 1:10 ratio.
And also active preamps ones Schiit make are very little gain, and also can be switched to passive.

Cheers George
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