Question about Gain, amp power and volume

Why do you feel that it is important to be able to open up the gain control further than you already are? Installing attenuators in series with the volume control only reduces transparency and detail. The only time such devices should be used is if the volume control ( aka "gain" ) is phenomenally touchy and hard to adjust for the desired listening level. If you find that the volume is constantly jumping from too soft to too loud by barely adjusting the gain, the attenuators might solve this. Otherwise, get them outa there.... Sean
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Ed brought up a good point and i agree. Having said that, i would rather have too much gain and have to keep the pot turned down than to have to run it at max and still be shy on volume. This is the kind of thing that boils down to component design and versatility. Since the manufacturer doesn't know the electrical characteristics of the mating amplifier, they try to cover all bases. Having said that, those with tube based preamps and SS power amps are in the worst boat. That is, they've got so much gain that they have to keep the pot turned WAY down most of the time. In order to increase volume control resolution / reduce the "touchiness" of the volume jumping around, they have to insert some type of attenuator in line. Now you've got two attenuators in line, which can only sound worse. Sean
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I need to amend what i said here:

"Now you've got two attenuators in line, which can only sound worse."

The following is actually more accurate:

"Now you've got two attenuators in line, which can only perform worse. With that in mind, that doesn't mean that someone wouldn't find this sonically more pleasing due to personal preferences."

I wanted to correct myself since what we hear / prefer is subjective. The fact that more signal attenuation with a longer signal path and more connections would degrade the signal / electrical performance is not really debatable. Sean
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All i will say is that you can't have "too much" power with Dunlavy's. I think that there are better ways to achieve what you desire, but i'm not you and we probably see things differently. Sean
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By having more steps in a control, you can obtain higher resolution. That is, rather than jumping up 2 or 3 dB's at a time, you can now step .5 or 1 dB at a time. This allows one to find the exact volume that they want. Only problem is, with that many steps, it is a REAL pain to obtain proper channel balance in terms of building the controls themselves. I have units with Mil-Spec potentiometers in them from the factory and even those don't track all that well ( channel to channel ). Can you imagine what it is like to have to sit and match resistors and then have to solder them to a million different steps on an attenuator??? Believe me, it is NOT fun.... Sean
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