Super-sensitive volume controls - remedy?

As far as I remember the Redbook standard has always been 2v.
Just look at the first players from Sony/Marantz/Philips.
EG: Sony CDP-101 Marantz CD-73 etc.
They all have 2v output spec, which is all that's needed to drive the majority of poweramps from yesteryear or today into clipping.

All this gain with preamps today, is a left over from the days of vinyl with low gain phono, step ups, and head amps, when you needed some extra gain.

Today digital sources, including phono stages have 2v and over output and that's all needed with a passive pre or unity gain buffer to send an amplifier into full clipping, so why the extra gain??

I keep coming back to Nelson Pass's statement below.

"We’ve got lots of gain in our electronics. More gain than some of us need or want. At least 10 db more.
Think of it this way: If you are running your volume control down around 9 o’clock, you are actually throwing away signal level so that a subsequent gain stage can make it back up.
Routinely DIYers opt to make themselves a “passive preamp” - just an input selector and a volume control.
What could be better? Hardly any noise or distortion added by these simple passive parts. No feedback, no worrying about what type of capacitors – just musical perfection.
And yet there are guys out there who don’t care for the result. “It sucks the life out of the music”, is a commonly heard refrain (really - I’m being serious here!). Maybe they are reacting psychologically to the need to turn the volume control up compared to an active preamp."


Cheers George

Minkwelder hi.
Most sources these days have enough output on their own to drive amps into clipping and then some, so there is no need to add more gain and colouration from an active preamp.

As Raymonda has said a passive preamp will do and probably give you even more transparency and dynamics.

This one is a bargain at $49 and uses a quality 10kohm pot.

http://schiit.com/products/sys-passive-preamp

Cheers George

Jafox, as I said above two posts back, they "can" be a negative.
What is the output impedance of the component before them? and the input impedance of the component after them?.
That way we can prove with math, it was a bad electrical impedance match.

Cheers George

11-23-14: Ghosthouse
Do attenuators like the Rothwells impose any sort of penalty related to sonic quality? Thanks. Hope this is of interest to the OP too

They "can"' as they could introduce an impedance mismatch between the previous components output impedance and the next stage, the amp.

As they are a voltage divider inside and this will change the input impedance that the previous stage sees.

Especially if that previous component is a weak high impedance tube output stage, EG: tube source or tube preamp.

Cheers George