Question about Gain, amp power and volume

I must agree with Sean in that it is not necessary to have so much power to have really quality audio so you really don't need to turn your knob past the eleven o'clock position to get maximum performance.

One interesting note is that your volumn control really does not increase the signal as you start from the lowest position but rather this is the setting that most restricts the signal.

There is lots of terminology for this, but suffice it to say that the pre delivers the signal at miximum volumn and the volumn knob proceeds to restrict the signal so that what we call full voulmn is the signal with least restriction. There might be, perhaps some thing to be gotten by minimal restriction of the signal, especially if your volumn control knob is a less than a satisfactory one.

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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my two hopes in being able to use the full range of my volume control is to be able to use the full amount (or at least half) to have fine control over the volume, also i get a jump in volume at certain parts in my usable range that does not correspond to the amount the knob is turned. i enjoy my dunlavys so i am just going to spend a little time to get the right lower powered amp and a cd player that will be compatible, once again thanks to everyone for the input, mike

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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Mkaes, If you want to get a new amp, get one! BUT revisit the issues I raised regarding input sensitivity. Its not about the amount of power - I have three amps in my house I currently use, all are tubes (not that it makes a big difference) a 120 watt unit, an 80 watt unit, and 160 watt mono's. In that order they have input sensitivity of .65v, .95v, and 1.5v. The 160 watt units allow the most use of the volume control and I can get it up to about 12 o'clock using my BAT before its too loud. The 120 watt amp is too loud when the volume control is 10:00 (about a 9db difference). The 80 watt amp is too loud at 11 o'clock. As you can see from this example the amount of power the amp can put out has nothing to do with your problem. And, a final comment - you do not want to use all of the power available in you amp by rotating you volume control to the max - you will drive it into clipping which may not be good for your speakers health. As Sean sez, you can't have too much power, its just how you use it.