[DecibleDude]

 Interesting to me at least. Anyway, as most of us know there's a button on the Vision designed to raise or lower the gain to make the preamp more flexible with different amps, and speaker efficiencies. I've always assumed the correct default setting in my situation would be with the button not depressed, or off in other words, because both units are AVA and presumably designed to work together. I find both settings fine, but the other day just out of curiosity I inquired of Google & Brave AI's which setting was best to use in my situation. Both said to use the button on or depressed because it gives more usable space on the volume turn , a better volume balance between channels, lower noise floor, and less strain on the components. If true, that's a lot. So my question is for AVA or anyone who knows, is this true?   

[SJ David]

The reasons for using the lower gain level setting would make sense to me IF conditioned upon a situation where higher sensitivity speakers are used. Though I really don't know what is meant by claiming "less strain" on components.

[jedgar]

My Tannoy DC4000 speakers are quite sensitive and when I play CDs I activate the low gain.  When in high gain mode it gets too loud when volume control reaches much past the "9 o'clock" position.

When I use a bluetooth receiver, I go back to high gain selection as in high gain the v.c. goes to "11 o'clock" for normal listening.

When playing LPs, I generally select high gain and v.c. is usually around "10 o'clock" for normal playback.

My uninformed thinking is that the v.c. is a mechanism that "dials back" the signal and that this imposes something between source and ears that I should try to minimize.

In an earlier post I asked if it is possible to more finely tune (e.g. reduce the effects of) the remote control that came with the Transcendence 10 SLR preamp as I'd often like to dial in the volume more minutely.  The answer from Mithat was "nope." 

Oh well, its good to get the bones up and moving when I want Baba O'Reilly, or So What or Smells Like Teen Spirit or The Messiah just a little bit louder or quieter.

[Tone Depth]

You can adjust the effective sensitivity of the Vision SLR preamp volume control by changing the signal voltage level it receives. One way to do this is by pressing in the mute button on your preamp to decrease the in-coming signal level by attenuating the voltage. I did this all of the time with my Insight+ analog preamp.

If you had a noisy preamp, turning its volume control way up would increase the background noise in the signal sent to your power amp. In that case, you'd turn off the mute circuit and adjust down the volume control, for a lower background noise in the signal sent to the power amp.

[jimava]

Hi DecibleDude et al,

This is Jim at AVA.
The gain button simply reduces the gain and thus changes the volume control setting.  In other words, to get the same volume level with the button pressed means the volume control will need to be turned up higher.  The gain button is most useful when the system has high efficiency speakers as it loosens/extends the volume control (a larger rotation is needed). So while yes a) lowering the Gain would provide more useable space on the volume dial, b) it does not provide better balance between channels, c) it would lower the noise floor but if it is imperceptible already, it would have no practical effect, and d) putting less power (lower Gain setting) through the amp does put less strain on the components -> at the same listening level the component strain would be the same.

Thanks,
Jim

[DecibleDude]

Thank you Jim, my only remaining question is why would AI say that using the button would make the balance between the channels closer at low listening levels. I only ask again, because this isn't the first time I've read or heard this claim from a couple of different sources?  Thanks for the explanation's.

[seikosha]

With many volume controls, the channel balance is not as even at low positions as it is at high positions.  So if you have the gain set lower, it would force you to use a higher volume position thereby solving the problem.