24.4.36.180
In Reply to: RE: Bad Advise !!!!! posted by Vinylly on October 31, 2009 at 16:37:16
I know the older Modulus had a 100K Roderstein resistor in series with the CD input. I assume the Modulus 3 is the same....If not, disregard the rest of this post: The Roderstein resistor would pad the gain going into the pot and, of course add the sound of the resistor. Also you are adding the sound of an extra switch and circuit traces when using the CD input. The tape input does not have the series resistor and is the shorter purer signal path. However, having a purer path does not mean you like the sonic results...obviously. The Roderstein resistor has a depressed upper midrange (perfect to get rid of glare and hardness) a slightly wooly bass, and much less info than the straight wire. It is a "musical" sounding part but not very transparent in the truest sense.Your experience reminds me of the time I was playing with the original Hafler preamp and bypassed all the switching and ran the pot directly to the circuit.....it sounded thin and hard....this was because all the extra switches and wires and circuit board traces were rolling it off. So, I had to spend a great deal of time making the circuit have lower distortion so I arrived at a more musical sound with even more detail.
More than likely, you like a more colored sounding input in order to compensate for some distortions somewhere else in you system. Try sanding and blacking your CDs....you will get way less hard, bright and more musical sound. Do you have good tube dampers? Lots of ways up the mountain.
The Modulus preamp....the older ones that I know.....have a ton of gain...something like 26 times (2 volt CD player X 26 = 52 volts of gain, that is a lot to attenuate!!!!).....so this is why people are always complaining that they can never turn up the volume. The 100K resistor in series with the CD input was a way of lowering the gain somewhat to make it more user friendly.
Edits: 11/01/09Follow Ups:
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