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Why this happened (#2)

Posted by Mark Kelly (M) on December 28, 2008 at 16:15:34

In Reply to: For those of you using an active headamp; my experience trying to reduce noise levels... posted by tketcham on December 28, 2008 at 12:02:50:

The overall noise of a multistage amplifier is always dominated by the noise of the first stage.

When you reduce the signal gain on the Piccolo you do so by attenuating the input signal. The actual gain (and noise) of the amplifier is unchanged, so it is still putting out approximately 300 nV of noise. 60 dB of gain on top of this is 300 uV; this is -65dB in reference to a 500mV signal, that's quite audible.

If you run the piccolo at max gain the noise is still 300 nV. The subsequent gain of 40 dB gives you 30 uV which is -85 dB ref to 500mV, much less audible.

Edited from previous version to correct arithmetic and typos

Mark Kelly

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