cd player + preamp = too much gain

Hi Vaughan,

Did you use good quality attenuators, such as the Rothwell's?

Did you use them at the end of the interconnect cables (i.e., at input jacks and not at output jacks)? The Rothwell's are designed to be used in that manner, and even apart from their internal design I would expect that their sonic effects would be quite different depending on which end of the cable they are positioned at. If the attenuator is located at the beginning of the run, the cable parameters would interact with the output impedance of the attenuator, which is likely to be considerably higher than the output impedance of the component.

Also, did you try the attenuators between power amp and preamp, as well as between cdp and preamp?

Best regards,
-- Al

Hi Al,

I used "Goldenjacks", which as supposedly more transparent than any other in-line attenuator. I tested them on the input of the preamp and also on the input of the power amp - the 10dB pair almost had no effect on the sound, but the 16dB basically destroyed the sound altogether. Other people have reported great things about the Goldenjacks, but this seems to be with solid state amps.

I wouldn't mind trying the Rothwells, but getting another set would be yet another hit to the wallet when i think what is ultimately needed is a cd player with an output that is not so hot, or a preamp without 30dB of gain.

Could it have something to do with the quality of resistors in the inline attenuators?

Hi Vaughan,

I would suspect that the Goldenjacks and the Rothwells (and any other similar attenuators) all differ somewhat in terms of the resistor values that the designers chose, and possibly also in their internal circuit configurations. Those differences, and how they match up with the component impedances, would likely overshadow any differences in resistor quality.

And neither manufacturer seems to have internal design details presented on their website, which makes it all hard to predict.

If the 10db attenuators seemed to have minimal sonic impact, though, and if 10db attenuation was insufficient, why not try having 10db attenuation at the preamp input and another 10db at the power amp input?

Best regards,
-- Al

Thanks Al - not sure if I'll fork out more $$ to do that test! Might just get a passive volume control and leave it set at a certain level, at least this may save the experimentation with different in-line attenuators.

Any idea as to what manufacturers have a good reputation for not altering sound too much?