Audiophile Loudness Wars—Too Much again!?

Get an inline stereo attenuator; then, just adjust it to get the reduction in gain that you’re looking for.

And use it instead for the volume control, and get rid of the unnecessary gain, noise, and distortion, introducing active preamp.

Cheers George

Hi everybody,

If we back to the end of the eighties ,most of the tube preamp were fitted with phono stage .

My favorite preamp like  Pv 8, Pv 9a from Conrad johnson were terrific in term of matters and dynamic....
The pot volume was rarely set over 9 o'clock  in normal listening..

So'  the definition of loundness  means  an increase of volume but imply a reduction of dynamic, 
( increase of average power and decrease of 
The final sound lost in matter in many case, the dynamic is the main criteria to save in live music...

It is just an "old school audiophile point of view" but the true is in between depending of listening habits...

Raymond

If you think this is a problem, just buy less efficient speakers.

So' the definition of loundness means an increase of volume but imply a reduction of dynamic,
( increase of average power and decrease of
The final sound lost in matter in many case, the dynamic is the main criteria to save in live music...

Certainly not a necessary corollary.
too much gain is balanced by more attenuation in the volume control, with dynamic range handled absolutely proportionally.  Again, caveats to all the issues associated with conductive plastic volume pots....

G

thinking about many of the responses, i suspect we are confusing several issues:  gain, recording volume, use of limiters and compressors to increase average playback level etc.  Unless you are running a very unusual piece of equipment "more gain" will not cause those issues (such as **compression** or **loud playback levels**)  on its own.  It simply will play back louder for any given volume knob setting.

The only real issues are 1) lack of granular volume control and channel tracking when using only, say 12-->4 positions on the volume control.  The other potential (2)  associated problem is potential overload of any first preamp stage (only preamp stage(s) before the volume control is implemented - all others buffered by said volume control)