Passive Volume Control for DACs/Sources

Cheap, bargain basement new school gear mostly sucks. Tell respected brands like Mackie who worked their way up to be mainstays to not move production to China, cost reduce everything to hell, and try to sell it as the same so the owners can get more $ to people who can tell the difference if you don’t want people who’ve had bad experiences to bad mouth poor quality brands that are now being financiaized and “value engineered” even more so they will never make anything worthwhile ever again.

Now with someone like JBL, what they were making was actually worse than it is now. Financiers and corporate board bringing in that Russian engineer to fix everything only helped them. Yeah they value engineer everything to hell and make it not competitive with anything above the cheapest possible crap (the 305 at 150 a pair) but “cheap crap” is better than “junkyard fodder”

New school audiophiles have access to better tech and more knowledge than ever but refuse to use it. Good gear is cheaper than ever but most of them want the bargain basement crap, are hipsters fetishing outdated or flat out worse tech: new production vinyl, new cassettes, nos dacs, resistor dacs, nos tubes, crappy old unmatched discrete transistor solid state, frickin vfets, smoothed out class a junk, iems, lossy steaming services etc. This is all dumb and all dumb flexing by people paying more for beat up old vinyl and cassettes than new cds as they’re collectors and flexers who don’t really want to listen to the music as it is. It’s like guys complaining about treble listening to albums with audible solid state clipping like tons of 70s stuff or Stevehoffman forum “80s CDs best” idiocy even if those CDs have tons of treble issues, no bass, and nothing sounds like real instruments but dr 23 number meter says so more better! Or muddier so more better. About all these modern vinyl better dudes with belt turntables, lolololol f**k that shit. Old school technics take dumps on that.

Good gear is better and cheaper than ever if you don’t buy the cheapest most value engineered junk or most hyped up, well marketed crap. People really need to just listen to albums by themselves, not as background music but 90% of the people want to use it as background music for video gaming or driving or lofi beats for Netflix and chill or some crap.

People need to just listen to music. If the music is good enough, nobody will care how poorly it was recorded, mixed, or mastered. Unfortunately most modern music is disposable SoundCloud and Spotify crap, not a career testament like these massive albums from way back when. Nobody cares how bad Led Zeppelin I or Black Sabbath self titled sound as the music rules. Now some modern derivative shit that wants to sound like Mayhem or Joy Division it they smoked weed and couldn’t play and had catchy choruses and played pop shit? Redditors and other nu fools might care as they are listening to derivative, interchange angle crap but there is nothing interchangeable with the real deal stuff. What are the whiners who don’t want stuff that just works gonna do? Tell their buddies that they have over that they gotta play some modern rock as Motörhead is too raw? Good luck playing Nirvana wannabes to drunk dudes who want to hear Overkill, The Hammer, and Iron Fist

 

I'm very happy with the Khozmo in my system, although I haven't had any experience with many of the alternatives. I can say that going from /Saga>Vidar/ to /Saga>2 Vidars biwired/ to /Khozmo>2 Vidars bridged/ to /Khozmo>HegelH20/ has been an interesting journey that improved with every step forward. I had a brief sidetrack with a PSAudio S300 that I did not care for at all. Front end is Tascam CD200>Gungnir MB A1 and speakers are Salk. The Khozmo is the balanced version, with a series attenuator.

I don't have any problems with the steps of the volume control, but if you want a pinpoint volume setting I could see it being bothersome, Falls into nervosa for me though. Also, if you don't know, Khozmo and Hattor are from the same person.

 

Yep, Arek has been very responsive to my enquiries.

 

As general comment on the state of the world, I couldn't agree more. Good audio has been afordable for decades now. OK, so perhaps excellent audio costs a little more still...

 

Some musings and real world measurements on Goldpoint passive attenuators here

 

Can you do a measurement comparison between devices like these and simply putting a static attenuator before the pot in an amp to get it out of channel imbalance region? Is daisy-chaining attenuation like that worse than using just the goldpoint and cranking the pot to max to get it out of the system?

 

Thanks for the measurements. I don't see how you are myth busting though. Nobody here ever argued that passive attenuates do not measure "well enough" as to be supposedly imperceptible over short cable runs. They "do their job" so to speak in controlling the volume. They just change the sound and kill detail ime versus accepting the "coloration" and increased noise of active or the transformer sound. So the changes of all three are not in fact "imperceptible" and passive resistor attenuation with short cable runs thus is not as ideal in reality as it is portrayed as.

 

Did you compensate the level changes via decreasing digital attenuation when you compared two signal levels attenuated by passive voltage division? Or did you just turn that shit down and concluded that it sucked more that way? If there is a universal psychoacoustic law then listener preference to higher SPL might be just that. Louder music is more awesome and always wins on the basis of better signal to tinnitus ratio.

If @atomicbob cannot mythbust by presenting measurements, then can there be objective knowledge in audio at all? If not, then we are left to just blindly follow the people who confirm our opinions and never discover anything.

 

I started typing up some long philosophical late night response to on the limits of measurements versus perceived multiplicity of acoustic phenomena and casual explanations vs rationalizations but yeah I don't really care and this stuff is more determined than functionality than sound. Goldpoint costs gold and I'm skeptical of all claims to true transparency in audio and have had bad experiences with passive resistor pre-amps.

Goldpoint costs well over three figures for the resistors alone. Pots are cheap and feel nice. Knobs are fun to twiddle. People should buy something with knobs they can twiddle to control volume and remember to use the fewest boxes possible. All anyone mass producing a balanced passive pot box has to do is beat Mackie, JBL, and the German thing recommended a couple pages ago that you're not supposed to bother before 12 o'clock.

Someone needs to make a passive pot box and call it The Cold Box. Then they can make an active pot box and call it The Hot Box.

 

Yeah reworded that a bit. I think pots are fine in boxes. Sure a resistor ladder in my box or a resistor ladder box might sound cooler but then I would need to spend more for the same features (or worse features if passive) and minutely better sound. I could buy a lot of stuff for 600 bucks that would improve my system. I could buy some panels, a speaker, or over a thousand cans of cheap beer. With that much Busch or Genesee? Who knows what could be possible...

 

I've tried Schiit SYS, Tisbury passive, Goldenjacks and Rothwells between DAC and headphoneamp and they all suck out dynamics and details to various degrees. SYS (which is quite good actually) also colours the sound, on top of that. I'ts nice they measure well though, measurements can be so soothing.

The one good thing about the RME ADI 2 DAC is the option to reduce hardware reference levels. This is very recommended. I also find replay gain acceptable.

I'd love to find a workable solution to attentuate the signal between DAC and headphone amp for more comfort and range on the pot but so far I don't think it's doable.

 

I won't argue about that, it's a lot of money, but I will say it's so nice that I never have to give a damn about pot imbalances at the 8-9 o'clock ever again ever forever.

I just turn down the goldpoint till I'm in the middle and then twiddle whatever analog knob the device has and that's kinda liberating tbfh and you'll have to take mine from my cold dead hands.

 

Thats what I don't get about these. Can't we just rig up a pair of resistors at the amp's RCA inputs to pad down the volume to the point where its comfortably loud above the 8-9 o'clock mark on the pot for, what, a few bucks at most? We're only using a few of the resistors in these things at any time and paying for all of it.

 

Sure, and if you're only using 1 headphone that's what I suggest you do.

Or if you're doing something like padding a Dangerous Music Source's output for consumer gear use.

 

Well most of the worst problems with pots lie within the first quarter of the rotation, so if I pad it to the point where my most efficient cans lie at 10 or something, it should be good for the rest right? In the case where my least efficient cans turn out to be too quiet, I can just remove the resistors every time. I don't see many pairs where 10 o'clock to max can't cover both though, since usually if you have two headphones like that (HE-6 and something really efficient), you're probably better off using different amps for them anyway.

 

Sure I guess. Personally I run planars and dynamics and speakers straight out of the Af and I don't want to reach around the back every time because if I had to I wouldn't.