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In Reply to: RE: Volume control settings posted by M3 lover on July 10, 2014 at 15:49:14
M3 lover hi, your friend is right, here is a qutote from a living audio legend designer, Nelson Pass of Pass Labs and Threshold fame.
A Quote from the master Nelson Pass
Nelson Pass,
"We’ve got lots of gain in our electronics. More gain than some of us need or want. At least 10 db more.
Think of it this way: If you are running your volume control down around 9 o’clock, you are actually throwing away signal level so that a subsequent gain stage can make it back up.
Routinely DIYers opt to make themselves a “passive preamp” - just an input selector and a volume control.
What could be better? Hardly any noise or distortion added by these simple passive parts. No feedback, no worrying about what type of capacitors – just musical perfection.
And yet there are guys out there who don’t care for the result. “It sucks the life out of the music”, is a commonly heard refrain (really - I’m being serious here!). Maybe they are reacting psychologically to the need to turn the volume control up compared to an active preamp."
Cheers George
Follow Ups:
I'm with you, George. Well, except for the part of Nelson Pass being a living legend.
The amount of improved musicality with a passive pre can be pretty incredible. I assume this is mostly due to less distortions.
In the last 14 years, I've owned or auditioned about 15 preamps, including 2 Placette Active Linestage's and the Pass X1 and X2.5.
I've always taken great pride in the level of dynamics I've been able to achieve so a passive was out of the question for me.
However, I recently took possession of a 500wpc amp and suddenly the dynamics were overkill with an active preamp, especially the initial attack of a note. It was as though I was in the audience, yet every initial strike of a drum, pluck of a string, or blatt of horn was like my ear was 6 inches from the instrument. And there's simply nothing realistic about that.
Now with the high-powered amp and a passive pre, the level of musicality has greatly improved, high-frequency percussives have become quite pristine, far more ambient info, etc. but also the punch is still there when required for dynamic passages.
Only now the dynamics take place back up on the soundstage while I'm seated in the audience. Perhaps not quite the wow factor for some, but certainly much more musical and realistic.
And without doubt the lowered noise floor of a passive pre greatly improves most every aspect of the presentation.
quote: stehno, "the dynamics were overkill with an active preamp, especially the initial attack of a note."
Yes maybe you are hearing exaggerated "T.I.M." leading edge "transient intermodulation distortion" with the active pre.
A well implemented passive will give just as good if not better "bigger" transients, but in a more "wholesome, richer" way with body, instead of being fired at your ears from the individual speaker drivers like active pre's tend to do.
Cheers George
I'm sure it wasn't any more TIM than what you receive. Probably less.
No. It was most likely closely miked instruments whose air from the initial strike perhaps caused significant movemet at the recording mic's diaphragm that when played back by a high-powered amp tremendously emphasizes, even overemphasizes, that initial attack and thus give the impression that my ears where up on stage with the instruments for those overemphasized initial attacks.
All active circuits have more distortion/s and colourations than a good passive device. (re: Nelsons Pass's article in my first post and he sells active pre's))
One way you can figure this out, is if you have a source that is a good low output impedance, say below 1kohm which most are, and feed it direct into your poweramp, which should be the industry standard of 33kohm or higher which most are. This will be the most transparent/dynamic/uncoloured sound you can get.
Put on a known quiet starting CD (with your finger on the stop button just in case) and listen. This is the most transparent/dynamic way of getting the source signal to the poweramp, and I'll bet my last dollar that the well implemented passive volume control comes the closest to this sound or equals it.
The only way an active preamp can sound more dynamic than this is two ways. It is distorting with TIM giving you the impression of more leading edge dynamics or it has a built in dynamic rage enhancer (DBX) which sound like rubbish.
Cheers George
"We've got lots of gain in our electronics. More gain than some of us need or want. At least 10 db more. Think of it this way: If you are running your volume control down around 9 o'clock, you are actually throwing away signal level so that a subsequent gain stage can make it back up."
I say that here day in and day out and am soundly excoriated for it. Nobody want to hear it. They want two boxes where one would be more than sufficient. Nobody wants to reduce the noise, distortion, and cost a one box solution would bring them. How could they face their audio buddies with one box fewer than they have? This isn't about looking for the best sound or nobody would use a preamp; it is about the current audio fashion.
This is what can happen with a statement like that, as people have a lot of money tied up in their preamps, and they don't like being told it's almost an extinct piece of audio gear, a colouration maker.
You get excoriated, so do I for preaching it, Nelson Pass gets put on a pedestal.
This is what happens when you have a massive amount of design history behind you. At least he said it also, and the naysayers can't put him down, because he IS audio god.Cheers George
Edits: 07/14/14
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