[4krow]

 I recently joined AC to find new products, opinions, and ideas. Looks like I have hit another jackpot! With products such as Hagerman puts out, I feel that a very cool place has been discovered. Now, here is an idea that I have been using in lieu of the traditional volume+balance controls. It is not my idea but one that I stumbled upon at Glassware Audio. One iteration of this concept is to use a 6db per step stereo attenuator for the volume, with say 1.5db per step fine mono attenuators, one for each channel. The advantage of this comes about by decreasing one channel only, unlike a balance control. Now that I just said this, I was assuming that a balance control decreases the resistance to one channel, while increasing the resistance to the other channel.     In spite of possible misunderstanding of a balance control, what would be your take this other idea?
 From what I have seen of your products so far, it has greatly piqued my interest.

[poty]

Not understood the concept... There are "all fine" attenuators with 1 or even 0.5dB steps, controlled by relays with different "stage forms". The attenuators can be easily remote controlled, tune balance and even switch several tone bands or channels.
6dB is very rough step, IMHO, several control points for fine tuning is not convenient (if speak about simplification) and the sonic impact of real devices is unclear for me (but this point is understandable - it's only concept).

[4krow]

I am not very good at explaining so it easier if you go to the Glassware website and look at the  different combinations offered for these. The 3 control setup that I mentioned has total of 36 steps.

[avahifi]

A high quality Alps balance control such as the ones we use does not increase volume on one channel as it decreases it on the other channel.  The action is to only lower the volume on one channel while keeping the opposite channel uniform. Its action only affects one channel at a time.

Regards,

Frank Van Alstine

[4krow]

Thanks for clearing that up. And since you have stated this fact, the only upsides that I see in the coarse/fine attenuators that I mentioned might be repeatable settings, and maybe better sound. I say better sound, again, a tongue in cheek statement that I have not personally observed, only heard others claim. I want a circuit to be simple, but not if it cuts out a need that I have. Precise volume control, whether it be in volume or balance is important to me, no matter how I get there.