Volume Controls
I know that some people are passionate about High Fidelity but this is taking matters to a bit of an extreme...
From
Reference Audio Mods comes this:
bq. Us audiophiles (passionate? or maybe deranged!!) are on a relentless search for audio nirvana. A fundamental yet complex stop in one's journey always includes the preamp or volume control dilemma. The solutions that are available-tube/solid state preamps, passive attenuators, and digital volume control all provide varying degrees of performance some better than others. Our passion has led us to try all 3 solutions with **none** approaching the clarity and directness of "nothing at all" In short, connecting directly into an amplifier allowed us to hear far more,..Period. Unfortunately, having no control of the volume is not practical by any means and simply is not an option.
They go on with more advertising copy and have some photos of the volume controls with pricing at the bottom of the page.
Price you ask? The cheapest unit starts at $3,780 and the 'Signature Edition' sells for $6,820. These are real prices in US Dollars. If you want to really fine-tune your system, you can buy the special knobs for $485 each. Here is what they say about the knobs:
bq. Good vibrations, Bad vibrations it’s all about vibrations!! RAM would like to introduce a new signature level knob developed for the mighty Silver Rock potentiometer. The standard bakelite knob is certainly the best sounding compromise... but now Audio Consulting has taken this aspect of the Silver Rock much further. The new knobs are custom made with beech wood and bronze where the bronze is used as the insert to mount to the stem of the volume pot. The beech wood is coated several times with C37 lacquer for best sound as pointed out by Dieter Ennemoser. How can this make a difference??? Well, hearing is believing as we always say. The sound becomes much more open and free flowing with a nice improvement in resolution. Dynamics are better and overall naturalness is improved.
The thing that gets me is that this could possibly be an issue if and only if the same level of fanaticism was taken in the recording process but it generally is not. The signal passes from the microphone, through a five-dollar connector, into a couple bucks worth of cable, through plain copper wire and cheap circuitry and onto the computers hard disk (or wax master or whatever...). Applying this level of engineering to try to reconstitute the sound is throwing your money away.
Something that the high-end-audio people don't ever do is a true double-blind listening test. This is because the few of them that have been performed showed no real difference between the high-end equipment and well designed commercial stuff...
A fool and his money as they say.
Posted by DaveH at September 27, 2004 10:16 AM