impedence value.? amp to preamp.

Bombaywalla, it will help a lot, in one way, but now you have a different problem- drivability. There are very few sources that can drive 2.2K without distortion and/or bandwidth loss!

There really is not a good way to execute a passive volume control without running into some sort of problem like this. TVCs work much better, but have their own issues as well, although IMO far less severe. IMO/IME experience if you really want to do it right, an **properly designed** line stage is the only way to go.

Hi Bob, to really get a passive to work you get into trouble when you get over 10K for a value, even with short cables. That's why you are better off having the control inside the amplifier, or else inside the source (both inconvenient), and buffered from the cable. Even with 10K, the effect can still be heard.

There was a lot of talk about buffered PVCs a few years back, but what we are talking about then is an active without gain.

Hi Atamasphere,

There are some preamp designs that put volume pots at the output. What do you think of them?

I just bought a preamp that uses 100K volume control at the output. It works well with my power amp which has a 500K input impedance. However, it sounds thin with another power amp that has 60K input impedance.

Please comment. Thanks.

Hi Bob, no worries! The higher the value of the control, the greater its artifact (and that of the cable) is going to be. If you have a higher input impedance, like Vett93 above, the problem you get into is high frequency roll-off.

The lower the input impedance of the amplifier, the harder it will be to get bass at low volumes.

Essentially you can regard a passive system as a sort of tone control that also affects the volume. Because TVCs have greater control of their output impedance they can offer greater performance in this regard if other factors are also taken care of.