If you play your music between 10 and 12 on the d

I know one thing for my listening...having more, and cleaner WPC, almost always seems to articulate the music better over all the volume spectrum...that's if, of course, you have half-way good speakers, preamp, and other stuff,etc. I have 600 WPC. Do I need it? Probably not, however my music sounds articulated and clean at all levels, especially at low, soft levels. Your system's volume control is pretty much relative to your system. At 10 or 12 my music would be sort of loud for the room and my tastes. Loudness and articulation are definately two different animals i.e., nothing is louder and more obnoxious than a fully turned up boom box...it's plenty loud but no articulation.

Sure this is the sweet spot, but I find that some of today's digital gear puts out so many volts, that I end up with my analog preamp's volume at the low end of the scale.

I pretty much solved that problem by only playing LP's in my main system, but the new the new PS Audio DAC coming out in the next months claims to have a digital volume that does not degrade at any value above 50%. I am thinking this will be ideal to allow our analog volume to be optimized, and adjust the digital to get everything into it's sweet spot, for any given desired SPL from the speakers.

Just the opposite for TVC's, where output impedance rises with less attenuation. S&B TX102 @ 1KHz: .14/-40dB, 14/-20dB, 1.4K/unity. That's why I use high gain (38dB) amps with them. Input impedance is more favourable with attenuation too.

I have CD's that are "loud" at 1:00 and others at 10:00, depending on the recording level.