Best Volume Settings?

Digging up a thread from last year....as the OP's testing mirrors my own experience concerning Dac Volume Control  vs Pre/Integrated Amplifier.

Like the OP, I own a Hegel HD25.  My amp happens to be a Belles Aria.

With the DAC set to 100%, my music gets "very loud" at 9-10 o'clock. It would be blowing the roof off at 11 o'clock.  My curiosity was prompted by a thread on the Harbeth User Group site, going back to 2014.  In it, Alan Shaw was adamant (as only he can be) that amps should be working towards the top part of their volume pot movement for best sound quality. i.e loud should be experienced between 2-3 o'clock.

Shaw went on the say that there must be something "seriously wrong" if you're spending most of the time listening in the 8-9 o'clock range.

Provoked by this, I spent some time over the weekend testing different combinations.  Here's what I found:

1) To achieve 2-3 o'clock on the volume pot for very loud music, I'd need to reduce the DAC volume to around 50%.  This produced a muddy, muffled sound quality.  Obviously no good.

2) Around 75-80% on the HD25 means "loud" is achieved somewhere in the 9:30-11:00 o'clock range.  The music is clearly more rounded and analog sounding than full 100%. It's more enjoyable and listenable for longer periods.  It still apparently has the detail and punch of full signal, without the glare.  I like it.

3) This evening I'll experiment a little more with 85-90%.  Could be the sweet spot, as the OP and others have found

4) 100%, I have concluded,  is too hot.  I've never experimented before as I accepted Hegel's recommendation that 100% is the preferred setting when using a preamp.  I never really cared about the volume pot position.  Having tried lower DAC settings and higher amp settings, I'm convinced this is the best solution.

There are many preamps that provide too much gain when paired with the higher voltage outputs of many digital sources. The ability to reduce the output from these sources allows for less attenuation within the preamp.

Thanks for your various points of view so there is no correct answer depending upon the source and pre/amp design and specs. It was interesting and educational performing this experiment and is food for thought for anyone interested experimenting themselves.

Think of it this way: If you are running your volume control down around 9 o’clock, you are actually throwing away signal level so that a subsequent gain stage can make it back up.

Routinely DIYers opt to make themselves a “passive preamp” - just an input selector and a volume control.

What could be better? Hardly any noise or distortion added by these simple passive parts. No feedback, no worrying about what type of capacitors – just musical perfection.

And yet there are guys out there who don’t care for the result. “It sucks the life out of the music”, is a commonly heard refrain (really - I’m being serious here!). Maybe they are reacting psychologically to the need to turn the volume control up compared to an active preamp"

Cheers George.

"All amps distort the more their volume is raised"

That may be true but not necessarily through the entire volume range. The higher distortion at the (very) low portion of the volume range is a fairly widely agreed upon artifact of most amplifiers. Same is probably true for most attenuators perhaps with the exception of the fancier step resistors, etc. One other thing to keep in mind is many attenuators do not have linear adjustments by design and the lower portions of the control are coarser than the higher range, etc.    

  My vote is less amp volume and more source gain, but again, you don't want clipping 

In the latest issue of Stereophile, reviewer Jim Austin addresses this topic in the review of the Benchmark DAC3. He stated " most systems achieve their best noise performance in the top half of their volume range".