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Tweakers' Asylum Tweaks for systems, rooms and Do It Yourself (DIY) help. FAQ. |
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Tweakers' Asylum Tweaks for systems, rooms and Do It Yourself (DIY) help. FAQ. |
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In Reply to: Hey TAFKA Steve! posted by EdS on May 16, 1999 at 18:30:26:
Dunno about the sand-loading trick; you would definitely need to seal the switches and sand is not as good a dielectric as air (nobody sells sand-loaded cable, not even Purist Audio). You would also want access to the switch if the wipers need to be cleaned with a chemical cleaner (the switches recommended are self-wiping with silver contacts, so this should not be a problem). What could be a problem is that increasing the mass of these pot boxes may make for extra strain on their output connectors going into the amp (see Allan's comment about MIT cable box weight straining these connections). I haven't had an RF problem with both single ended and balanced EVS Ultimate Attenuators running between my Theta Pro Gen Va and my Krell MDA300 monoblocks (not as wideband as Spectrals or Goldmunds, but -3 dB at 150 kHz). Try without RF filters first, then you might want to clamp ferrite beads on the cables to see if these improve things. These days I've gone "apeshit nuts" with passive attenuators and am using seven separate sets of homemade in-line balanced fixed series and fixed shunt attenuators. To change volume I have to shut down the amps and plug in a different set of attenuators (I've gotten used to sorting my CD collection into groups that correspond to a specific attenuator level). These are very expensive to make ($200 parts per each stereo set includes AudioTruth (Wako) XLR cable-mount males and females joined back-to-back, Kimber AGSS wire--2" per signal line, all Vishay S102 resistors with 1.001 kohm, 0.05% values in series, and AudioNote lead-free silver solder), but sound even better than the EVS and Audio Synthesis passive units. BTW, don't forget the Shinkoh/AudioNote resistor alternative available at Angela Instruments. Also, the project gets more expensive with increased step levels (e.g., each Vishay resistor costs $10.50, Shinkohs are $5, Holcos are much cheaper and should be a good choice for the shunts), so I recommend you starting with just a few step levels and filling in finer steps when you get a feel for how many you need and what your budget can handle. If you consider the cost of parts, it is apparent that Ric Schultz is not getting rich on the EVS units, as I estimate parts costs at over $100/pr. Finally, passive units need burn-in like everything else (before burn-in the EVS units tend to sound closed-in and somewhat strident), so you'll need to run signal through each level setting to accomplish this. Sounds like a lot of trouble, but I've match an EVS unit against an Audio Research LS5B and it was no-contest in favor of the EVS. Good luck and have fun!
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Follow Ups
- Re: Hey TAFKA Steve! - TAFKA Steve 19:51:21 05/16/99 (0)
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