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In the Forum: Melquiades Amplifier
In the Thread: A different breed of 6C33C amplifier.

Post Subject: Was it preamp or DAC’s volume control?Posted by Romy the Cat on: 10/25/2011

Cyrille, thanks for the comments. The KOtriode’s 6C33C preamp is certainly a unique thing and not a lot of people have reference how it might sound. Not it is too complex but rather not a lot of people have balls to make preamp out 6C33C. In fact years back I made jokes out if it but here it come - homebody made it and look like you like the it’s sound. As I told I would love to hear it by I have too small testacals to undertake such a project…

The question I would ask however: how did you QE the volumes for bypass test? You said that you use digital output of your DAC to manage volume and you said that preamp has 8db of gain. So, I presume with preamp is you max out the DAC and use the preamp’s motorized Alps to set volume. This is fine. However, if you use no preamp then you had no volume control and the only way for you was to use the seemingly digital volume control of your DAC. By advised that the digital volume controls are more or less transparent ONLY if they are max out open. If you set a digital volume control for a fraction dB down then the entire signal is wasted. So, would it be possible that the advantages you hear in 6C33C preamp were partially due to the fact that your DAC’s digital volume control was maxed out, meaning was in bypass?

The Cat

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