Does remote control degrade the sound of tube preamps?

Yes, $600 to $1,000 IS a lot to spend on a volume control component.  But, it is one of the most important piece in the signal chain and can seriously degrade the signal and/or cause channel imbalances if the left and right channels do not track perfectly.  Spending for quality here makes far more sense than spending it on other stuff, like fuses, and fancy power supply caps.  

The only time I see remote control affect sound quality is when manufactures use those crappy integrated circuit volume controls, like the ones used in Audio Research, or early Sonic Frontiers, to name a couple.

 What's the point of building a beautiful tube circuit only to have it ruined by a 10 cent IC.

Cost to have remote control can get quite expensive. A motorized stepped attenuator can get up to $1000 for small lot production.

Cost in my preamps with an motorized Alps control is about $250.00, but a motorized Khozmo can be much more, and they take up a lot of room. Then there are the relay types. Relays aren't cheap, and there are a lot of extra parts involved.

 None of these types will affect the sound quality in a negative fashion.

$600 to $1,000 for the Volume Control? Good Grief! No wonder the reviewers take the time to talk about them. I thought the cost was $50 to $100 before we start talking about ‘knob feel.’

It might be a $100 cost item, but by the time we get to pay for it, the cost multipliers might make it be $500 by the time the end user is paying for it. Everything, including the instruction sheet/book for a given audio piece, has a multiplier on it’s costs. This is inescapable.

Then, we can find $500 ’cost price’ motorized volume pots out there. Where there are almost none of them used in production gear. They tend to be used mostly in the DIY hobby self-made gear market, or tweak upgrades...as that one would make for an approximate $2.5K price increase in a given retail price (Eg, a high end item in widespread distribution and sales) - over that of a $20 manual potentiometer.

This is where the lore of the manufacturer comes into play. Where the given designer has to try and make the right choices, either financial or that of designs toward extreme fidelity and use their money saving smarts as best they can.

It’s like speakers. Anyone can make a very expensive excellent speaker (relatively speaking!) but it takes a real design and build monster... to create excellent gear at lower prices.

Since people, audio fanatics*... can be of the type that hunts down lower prices like audio crackheads, always looking for more at the lowest price possible... this can be a losing war.

Thus many companies try to play the puffed chest exceptionalism game ("I’m/we're betterest than anyone else!") in promotion of what they do. Then in their promo material they go out of their away to present industry norms as evidence of their exceptionalism, as they ain't really got any but the average customer knows so little..that..well... 

Some are truly exceptional. Good luck figuring it all out...it’s too many variables for the average person.

*I wanted to call a cable ’the 43’ in honor of the norm of audio fanatics trying to get the best product possible for the least money possible, in all things, in all ways, to the point of fretting incessantly about it. to the point of fighting for the price but also putting every cent they have to spare, into the game.

Like a crackhead approaching the dealer and pulling rumpled bills out of their pocket and asking ’how much crack can I get for.....uhmm...$43?’ Which is all they have in the whole world and in their pockets. Just a bit of dark audio humor I wanted to bring up to the front of the discussion.

This problem or issue... is so relevant and real that, IIRC, Audioquest has some seven different lines of cables (approx), and in that, they can vacuum up every cent on the table in any audio sales scenario. This is either smart, or despicable, or both (or neither)...depending on one’s view.

Motorized stepped attenuator like in the old Rogue Hera / Athena - no, but it was klunky to use as the control sucked.

@mulveling What exactly sucks about the motorized stepped attenuators in the Heras and Athenas?  Mine seems to work pretty good.

Interesting question.

Back in the day, a remote would trigger mechanical relays, servos or motors to increase/decrease volume or change a input. Today some of it’s the same, but…