Does remote control degrade the sound of tube preamps?

Quality wise, there  are not that many extreme quality 'motorized volume pots' out there.

Recall the elaborate mechanism put in place by Charles & crew at Ayre, for their 'peak quality' remote control preamp.

It's not just isolation and separation of the motorization aspects from the rest of the circuitry in order to avoid any electrical or electromagnetic interference from said motorized circuitry.

it's the availability of high or peak quality remote control volume designs. They get very rare and in limited numbers, and thus very expensive, at the top of it all.

some go for relays and resistive ladders/arrays. Depending on the relays in use, this can be very very good sounding. But it can also be distinctly mediocre. Or even below the quality norm set for a $20 Alps plastic pot, the near ubiquitous blue version.

I believe that DACT makes a few remote versions of their discrete ladder designs. Which might be the most common peak quality oriented unit available right now, without going totally off the deep end.

Such a pot, depending on the applied version (customized, etc) might add $600 to an easy $1k, or more, to the final retail price of a given item.

Do you think the sound quality is degraded with a remote? I am talking about an audible effect.

@chungjh 

@larryi got it right. It was for this very reason that we motorized our existing manual volume control in our MP-1.

The remote control of the EAR-Yoshino 868 works just as @larryi describes: a motor manually moves the volume knob, affecting the sound of the pre-amp in no way. The remote's only other control is a mute button. Volume and mute are the only two functions I require from the remote of a pre-amp.

CJ has been using relay / resistive ladder volume since the CT 6 maybe earlier.  It is proven and in my opinion better than electronic volume controls like the ones CJ used when they built McCormack preamps.   Those were a Burr Brown volume chip,  I hated the volume control on my RLD 1 ,  in fact that was the shortest duration I have owned a preamp.  I replaced it with a CJ Classic 2SE 

My Zesto pre uses a motor that moves an analog volume pot.   The IR circuitry has no effect on performance.   I much prefer analog rotary volume knobs

+1 @larryi 

There have been greatsounding preamps that use a remote cj uses relays and switches in individual resistors

Ken Steven’s makes an awesome preamp but his heart is not into convenience 

There is nothing that makes remote controlled volume control inferior in sound quality.  If it is implemented with a motorized potentiometer, the quality is entirely dependent on the quality of the potentiometer, not on the motor whose only job is to twist the shaft just as your hand would also do.  Even if your volume control is a rotary step attenuator, it is possible to physically move the dial under motor control (Ayre does this).  Many very good attenuators are ladder step attenuators that are switched by relays, and the relays are always remote controllable.

It is so important to get volume set just right to get optimum sound quality and satisfaction, and that can only be done practically by remote control as you sit in the sweet spot and instantaneously hear the result.  Remote control of volume is pretty much an essential feature, not merely a convenience.  Without it, one tends to just live with something close to the right volume instead of actually determining what is the right volume.

In theory anything you put in the signal path will alter the sound (usually negatively)

https://tortugaaudio.com/docs/ldr-volume-control2/

Turtaga Audio makes an optical based attenuator that doesn't effect the signal path.

or

The Hornehoppe 

The Truth passive preamp. 

http://www.thehornshoppe.com/the_truth_pre_amp.html

Great question.

For decades, meters or displays would be included in high end equipment, with the ability to defeat them. In the last few years Audio Research took the problem head on. They decided, if they were to have “silent” meters they would have to design and manufacture their own… ones that did not impact the sound (ghost meters). Before this audio companies just purchased generic meters… and they interfered with the sound quality.

This is how the high end moves forward. As a manufacturer you can choose the cheapest parts to make a piece of gear (this is how we got $20 Blu-ray players), or chose the very best component for a given design. Then, when it counts… make your own… think Focal… making their own drivers.

Unless the remote circuitry can be removed for comparison we will never know.  Meanwhile just listen and decide if it sounds good, Remote or no remote.  Now what other impractical issues can we all worry about?

it depends

in general it probably depends more on the volume pot configuration, not so much the remote control of it

It would not surprise me if it remotes do alter the sound. But IMO the convenience outweighs the tiny fraction which it may cause. I might think different at 35 yrs old. But at 71, I won't buy a preamp without remote. Besides that is that Conrad Johnson does not make a preamp which comes without remote. And they are among the best  top tier preamps. Whatever the case, I don't care

I am deeply suspicious of remote control on an analog preamp. Mine does not use remote and sounds great I realize that means nothing but getting up to change volume is also good exercise.