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"Too much gain"? (Cary SLP05 question)

A few days or so ago, someone had revived an old Cary SLP 05 thread, and common to that discussion seemed to be the subject of too much gain. 

My first question is:  does compensating for too much gain by simply adjusting the volume knob knob down degrade the sonic quality?

My second (2 part) question relates to this quote from one of the replies in that thread:

 A quick note to Pass Labs and they suggested a pair of Rothwell 10db balanced attenuators into the amp’s inputs.

What exactly do balanced attenuators do to resolve this issue, and if placed between the preamp and the amp, would they degrade the signal path & therefore the sonic result out of the speakers?

I am a relatively new owner/operator of a SLP05 and it is in front of one of the earlier Cary V12s.  I did find those balanced attenuators on ebay for (I think I remember them being) $89 a pair, which I find totally doable.  I am lsitening in a (very) near field room right now, and it seem as if I do have a lot of gain.  Generally the big knob is on 9 o'clock plus or minus a little bit depending upon the source material I am listening to.  I am using the balanced ins and outs to & from my SLP05 and I have been given to understand that using RCAs would reduce the gain somewhat.  I do have some RCAs (I am presently using Kimber Silver Streak balanced interconnects) but my collection of spare RCAs is Kimber PBJ and Monsters. 

For $89 should I try putting a pair of those  of Rothwell 10db balanced attenuators into the balanced amp’s inputs?

 

immatthewj

Showing 3 responses by xcool

xcool's avatar
xcool
273 posts
 

Hi @immatthewj,  the cost is actually $140 bench fee plus parts and labor.  He didn't specify how much is parts and labor.   Sorry about the confusion.   Anyway, I decided not to go for that mod.

Although the Cary support person is very nice, sometimes he doesn't give me a straight answer.   I was trying find out from him whether Cary recommends leaving the left & right gain dials at maximum for best sound quality.  He never really answered my question.  Instead, he offered the gain reduction modification if I think the gain is too high.

As mentioned in my earlier post, I've been setting the gains at 3 o'clock position.   I haven't tried that many different combination of gain settings between the Cary and my power Amp.   I might try to do that when I get my unit back.    

Looks like my unit is pretty much fixed, they have been running it continuously over the weekend to make sure everything is alright.   I expect them to ship it back to me some time this week.    I'll try to post an update once I get it back.

 

xcool's avatar
xcool
273 posts
 

Hey @immatthewj, I didn’t realize you’re the OP.  I think you had commented on the other Cary thread that I started.  Anyway, I just had an email exchange with Cary support about this gain issue.  Apparently they have a service called Gain Reduction on the unit to lower the gain by 6db.  It costs $140 plus parts and labor. I decided I’m not going to do that, but it’s an option for you to think about.  

xcool's avatar
xcool
273 posts
 

I'm also a new owner of the Cary SLP-05, and I set the left & right gain of the unit to a relatively low level (around 3 o'clock position).

My power amp is the Parasound JC5, which also has a pair of input gain dials.  Parasound recommends to set them to the max.  That does seem to make the amp sound better when I was using my JC2 as the preamp.   So I kept it that way.

I did try to dial back the JC5 input gains, and max out the SLP-05 gains.   To me it sounds better with the JC5 at max, so I decided to dial down the SLP-05.  Even at the 3 o'clock position,  my max listening level rarely go past 10 o'clock on the volume control of the SLP-05.

 

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