Does the volume control effect sound quality?

I think some folks who are familiar with the Manley Steelhead, would say that it's a respectable piece.
As good as it is,it's not as clean as the Lightspeed Attenuator that I am using now.

Very easy to hear the loss of detail when running my Esoteric cd/sacd player into the Steelheads line input and running the variable(volume control)outs to my power amps(Acoustat servo tube OTL).

Using Antony and Johnstons the Crying Light, for example, his multi tracked voice and background instruments are no longer buried when I listen with the Lightspeed in the chain.Details which I never knew were missing are now easily heard.Sounds cliched, but it's what I am enjoying now.

I also decided to try the Manley phono stage in fixed mode to the Lightspeed, and again the sound was better.

Had I never tried the Lightspeed I would still consider the sound of my sources to be quite respectable.I am not denegrating the sound of the Steelhead ,used as a linestage, but others have stated that it sounds it's best when used as just a phono stage.So is it's volume control the culprit?I'm now thinking yes.

My take on the Lightspeed is that it imposes less of a sonic smudge on the music as some other volume controls do.
I've had some fine preamps in the past and really enjoyed my time with the MP3,S-30 from Atmasphere running a stacked pair of Quad 57's.

Unfortunately,the MP3 is true balanced, so I wouldn't have been able to properly impliment a Lightspeed and bypass it's volume control.I will say that the MP3 made balanced cable comparisons a thing of the past.

But in the single ended world of the rest of the pre amps that I have owned,I have to say that I'm hearing more detail now using the Lightspeed than I did with any of the other pre amps,all of which cost ten times or more than the Lightspeed and many with some very good resistor ladder volume controls.

Does the volume control effect sound quality?
My answer is yes.

YES a lot and so is aging of such. Replacement of one in 15 years+ may drammatically improve the sound.

Hi Lacee, I tried to look at a pic of the Acoustat servo tube OTL amps, and it looks to have passive volume controls on the input to them, if so, if you or someone can remove them from the circuit (not just bypassed) then the Lightspeed Attenuator will jump up another order of SQ magnitude for you again.

Cheers George

Thanks for the advice George, but this and several other mods have been done to the Acoustat servo amps,all the better to showcase how good the Lightspeed is.

The Acoustats I have are not stock,they were modded by DTS audio,I power the servo amps with Shunyata Annaconda power cords which are plugged into a Furutech GTX Gold receptacle on a dedicated 20 amp line.
The IEC on the amps were replaced with top of the line Furutechs,and the connectors(3 per amp)are also upgraded rhodium from Furutech, and the RCA on the Acoustats are the upgraded Furutech rhodiums.Interconnects are Nordost Heimdal.I use AMR gold fuses in the amps with the WA fuse chips and transformer chips.

The speed and clarity of this system was great when I was using the Steelhead as a pre/phono.
Using the Lightspeed and bypassing the Manly for cd and using only it's fixed outputs for phono has improved the clarity even more.

Yes, I've lost the mono control on the Steelhead by running fixed output, and I have to switch the IC from the Esoteric to the Steelhead for vinyl, but the sound improvement is well worth the effort.

And for me, that's why I do the things I do.

Did I hear "gear head" stream from the peanut gallery?
Been called worse, but if you really are into the music,you owe it to the music to give it the gear it is deserving of.

What good are 10,000 lp's if you've only heard 25% of the music recorded on them ?