2. amps-preamps
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No Volume Swing -- help

I go from no sound to ear bleeding when I turn the dial from 0 to the 1 hour mark on my Pre-Amp! What am I doing wrong?? I can live with it, but I prefer a little more swing in the volume control.

This happens with both my Rotel RMB 1095 and my Parasound HCA-855a amps. My pre amp is an Audio Refinement Pre5. Which is nothing but an analog preamp. CD player is a Marantz DV8400.

I can somewhat remedy the situation by bringing the gain controls on the back of the Parasound from 100% to about 25%, which gives me a little more volume swing. But I've heard all that does is introduce resistance and attentuation, which is actually bad for the signal path. I do not even have this option on my Rotel 1095.

What does all this mean. Is my YBA Pre5 junk? Do I need to internally modify the gain on it to be flat? How do I do that?

Any help is much appreciated, as I am finding this quite frustrating!!

Thanks,

Jason
jfiluk
racarlson
68 posts
 
This is unfortunately common, and has caused me to give up on using some otherwise excellent preamps. One solution (which assumes you're using single-ended, not balanced/XLR cables) is to put attenuators at the amp inputs. Parts Express (see www.partsexpress.com) sells pretty good ones (see part numbers 266-240, 266-242, 266-244). You can also find the somewhat more expensive (and in my experience, no better in sound quality) Rothwell attenuators advertised here on Audiogon.
Rich
swampwalker's avatar
swampwalker
5,138 posts
 
Both Rich and Raquel are correct. High gain pre-amp may require attenuating the gain on the amp. The fixed attenuators like the Rothwell, which I have used, do not have any significant impact on sound quality.
jfiluk OP
8 posts
 
Swampwalker,

Ok, so it sounds like I have 2 options to attenuate the gain on the amp:

1) Use the gain controls right on the amp
2) Buy the Rothwell attenuators and keep the amp volume gains at full.

As it is now, I dont notice any difference in quality with the gain set only to 35% on the Parasound, but this Rothwell idea sounds interesting.

Thanks for the advice.

Jason
racarlson
68 posts
 
Jason -- There are potential advantages to using the attenuators: finer adjustment in the resulting range of your volume control, and (perhaps) better channel tracking - even some very good volume controls don't track as well at lower levels. Of course, if you're happy with the sound now, why bother?
Rich
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