What prompted all this was the fact that the output from the Bugle, driven by my turntable, into the soundcard was just way too high. I could barely get the line in volume down to a manageable level within Audacity. I was basically on the last tick of the slide control before the minimum/off setting.
So I worked on a couple of attenuator pads to reduce that volume. All of them clipped. The most recent T-pad with 22K ohm input and output resistors and 33K ohm shunt seemed to do the best in terms of actual volume range into the soundcard (the pad was connected between the Bugle output and the line input on the soundcard). The pad's design was based upon an input and output impedance of about 47K ohms.
I couldn't locate the design tool for determining the Bugle gain settings, but the circuit looks simple enough with respect to gain adjustment - the gain of op amps is typically determined by a voltage divider - in this case, the resistor pair is such that the gain for the first stage is set at 11. I'll need to research this some more before "playing" with the gain to determine the impact on other aspects of the Bugle - if this is the correct line of thought then I will pursue it, otherwise, it is back to the drawing board - perhaps trying a different preamp to see how the volume is into the soundcard.
john