Emotiva usp 1 pre-amp


Recently pick up the Emotiva USP-1 pre amp ...phono section is good sound stage is very good as well.

But I am setting the volume to about 10 to 1 "O Clock to do what my old 55 belles pre amp would at about 9 o-clock. I take that this unit has some serious damping factor going on..???



wayne3720

Thanks To Mgreen27 and Mesch for your post...my feeling was something along the line of what both of you stated. I notice even when listening to different recording Lp's and Cd's the volume is what I expected at the 9 O-Clock settings.


Thanks ....Wayne

All has to do with the gain of the units in question and the attenuation spectrum of the volume control. Not all volume controls attenuate evenly across the sweep. It is best when volume controls are used higher up as long as max volume desired is not retarded. No reason to provide gain just to attenuate most of it. 

"I take that this unit has some serious damping factor going on..???"

No. Different components don't all work the same way. Your phono pre amp and line stage preamp, both have power amps in them just like the ones you use to drive your speakers. They're just much smaller. Its like the difference between a 50 and a 100 watt amp. Its just on a much smaller scale. There's other factors, as well. A good example is balanced vs SE operation. Balanced operation runs 6db higher than SE.