CHAPTER 13
Volume Controls
Volume Controls
A volume control is the most essential knob on a preamplifier –in fact, the unhappily named “passive preamplifiers” usually consist of nothing else but a volume control and an input selector switch. Volume controls in one guise or another are also freely distributed on the control surfaces of mixing consoles, examples being the auxiliary sends and the faders.
A volume control for a hi-fi preamplifier needs to cover at least a 50 dB range, with a reasonable approach to a logarithmic (i.e. linear-in dB) law, and have a channel balance better than ±1 dB over this range if noticeable stereo image shift is to be avoided when the volume is altered.
The simplest volume control is a potentiometer. These components, ...
