2. amps-preamps
  3. 1305516930

My system is too loud

The volume on my system begins abruptly at a normal listening level on my preamp and goes up. My system doesn't play at all at low volume. I have a dehavilland mercury preamp. a pilinius Koru phono preamp, response audio 60W amp and sonist concerto 3s (fairly efficient speakers). I just substituted the pilinius for a pro-ject seII. It sounds fine but won't play softly. (I need it to play at low volume because I am in an apartment) I have a clearaudio wood MM virchuoso cartridge. I've lowered the gain to 50 from 56. Still too loud.
128x128bruceov
6 responses Add your response
johnsonwu
469 posts
 
The gain of the modified Jolida (if thats what your response audio 60W is) is extremely extremely high.
You can add a potential divider to the input to attenuate it at the expense of transparency.
Ask Response Audio for advice on triode mode which lowers the gain and actually makes it more musical, and perhaps redoing the SRPP gain stage into something else.
mofimadness's avatar
mofimadness
4,992 posts
 
Most MM cartrides need only around 40-42db of phono preamp gain. You need to add in the line stage gain of course, which is listed as 12db for your dehavilland. That gives you a total of 62db. That's quite a bit. I think your 50db setting on the Koru is way too high.
marakanetz's avatar
marakanetz
5,473 posts
 
Agree that 50dB is too high for Clearaudio Wood cartridge it gives as memory serves around 3.5mV. In the low-40's will do just fine.
charles1dad's avatar
charles1dad
10,250 posts
 
Agree with the above posts, there`s excessive gain in use for that high output cartridge.
Post removed 
bruceov's avatar
bruceov OP
4 posts
 
Thank you for your responses. The Pilinius gain doesn't go below 50dB. Behind the tubes of the mercury. there are two black knobs ostensibly for balance. The instructions said normally these are fully clockwise for maximum gain. I've turned them down 3/4 maybe that will work. Otherwise I will try the Viridian plugs.
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