Parasound's Hint 6's new volume control provides huge sonic advances?

Would like an unbiased review of it vs a gain cell.

+1 fuzztone

hilde

volume control design is absolutely critical in top quality linestages, designers have fretted and test their wiles for years to do the best sounding ones, esp. if remote control capability is involved

many attempts to innovate over time, from the melos pho-tentiometer, to the tortuga light based LDM units, to cj's relay based units, to the Polish Khozmo units that Don Sachs uses... not to mention those doing it in the digital domain -- which is fine if it doesn't lose the full bitstream resolution at lower volumes

parasound has become pretty sharp at marketing... i think this hint unit is their attempt to steal some thunder (and sales) from the successful hegels it emulates with its features set (and then some - hegels don't have phono stages built in) - i am curious if their Burr Brown volume control is such hot stuff, why is it not in their high end jc pre?  maybe it is coming in the next product cycle

Thanks, jjss49. I appreciate learning that, and it will be interesting to see whether this feature is really an advance. I know that I avoided a remote control with my own Line Stage because of advice to keep things as simple as possible. But simple is not how Parasound rolls, so this may be their way of saying, "convenience and sonic quality."

I read the older Parasound integrated amp used an old school potentiometer whereas the new one does not so that would seem to be a significant difference.