Audiophile Loudness Wars—Too Much again!?

simple answer: turn down the volume. Does the same thing and easier than any of the methods described above - they are ALL resistive divider networks. Admittedly, the volume may track poorly at low volumes and most continuous volume controls are more colored than a pair of resistors (which is why i have not used them for new designs or in my own systems in years).
Now, on to your question; as always, "yes and no". :-)


yes, many components, notably DACs, put out a nominal voltage that is WAY above the unofficial "standard" of ~ 1Vrms line level at max volume. The new normal seems to be 2V rms. The worst offender i have seen is Theta (at least legacy Theta) at about 8V rms. This is enough to seriously over-drive the inputs of many pre-amps.

Why is this done?   Well, because enough people think the idea of "passive pre-amps with simply a passive volume control, is a good idea. So they give them lost of gain to play with. What do you know, the Theta DS-Pro DAC was derived form the earlier DS-Pre DAC/preamp. And in the electronics, apparently nothing changed.


I see the allure of a hgih quality passive attenuator in place of an amp; but only if you have the knowledge to ensure good impedance matching. These "DACs with power amps built in" solve that in spades.

But, in the end, you can just pad it down with the volume control. Its just a resistive divider, just like a gain attenuator would be (with a few caveats there for methods that IMO are worse yet).

Preamps i have designed, assuming the producers leave them mostly alone, have about 6-9 dB of gain typically.

G

So' the definition of loundness means an increase of volume but imply a reduction of dynamic,
( increase of average power and decrease of
The final sound lost in matter in many case, the dynamic is the main criteria to save in live music...

Certainly not a necessary corollary.
too much gain is balanced by more attenuation in the volume control, with dynamic range handled absolutely proportionally.  Again, caveats to all the issues associated with conductive plastic volume pots....

G

thinking about many of the responses, i suspect we are confusing several issues:  gain, recording volume, use of limiters and compressors to increase average playback level etc.  Unless you are running a very unusual piece of equipment "more gain" will not cause those issues (such as **compression** or **loud playback levels**)  on its own.  It simply will play back louder for any given volume knob setting.

The only real issues are 1) lack of granular volume control and channel tracking when using only, say 12-->4 positions on the volume control.  The other potential (2)  associated problem is potential overload of any first preamp stage (only preamp stage(s) before the volume control is implemented - all others buffered by said volume control)

DACs can have very high line output levels, up to 4V is not atypical for a balanced DAC’s XLR outputs. Compare this to a typical "audiophile" analog setup with a 0.5mV MC cartridge into a phono stage with 60dB of gain, netting 0.5V line output. That’s 18dB lower than the 4V DAC! That’s not just a huge difference - that’s a world apart.

All correct.  But the question is, why is this tolerated?  Its not hard to design a balanced out DAC with a proper output level (of course, with stuff all over the map its getting harder and harder to determine what "proper" is, but i would suggest between 1-1.5vRMS full output.

As to the MC - again, what we need there, and all my stuff could do it, even "back in the day" is the provision for > 60dB of gain.  I could provide up to 68dB, with a very low-noise, low-impedance balanced input stage.

The only problem was, again the wide variation in cartridges and components such that no one setting for MC or MM would be ideal for everyone.  So it could be custom set to whatever a dealer or customers wanted - by special order.

But if designers adhered to even nominal, de-facto standards there would be far less issue.  right now I'm designing a product that uses an unconventional part, which is great in many ways but, due to basic physics, will overload with an input of more that 4.25V p-p (divide by 2.82 for rms).  this means i MUST have optional pads or really bad things happen.  Pisses me off.

End rant :-)