I think any resistor would adversly affect the frequency response of your speakers.
It may or may not. Try it and see, they’re pretty cheap.
Amplifier designers go to a lot of trouble to minimise the output impedance of their amplifier designs, adding at 20-50 ohm resistor will negate all their hard work and some. Its going to impact the effective amplifier damping factor too. Not to mention all of the huff and puff of using phat speaker cables and posh connectors, adding a resistor in circuit sounds like a terrible idea.
If you really must you could consider using an attenuator in the line level signal path, whilst this isn’t great its no where near as bad as putting resistance in the speaker path.
2 Likes
Sounds like a need for a “passive preamp”.
There will almost certainly be a significant degradation of sound quality:
The frequency response will be very uneven and the speaker will be under-damped.
Even using a series-parallel resistor network, although giving less degradation will still significantly affect the sound.
Unless you’re trying to set it to very low background levels, there may be a hardware problem with the Unitilite. A Naim dealer may be prepared to test it for you to see if it isn’t performing as it should. Another option is to use a sound pressure meter; although the ones on 'phones aren’t accurate, they may still be accurate enough to pick up any gross issue with the volume.
1 Like
That is an excellent idea as if will enable understanding as to whether there is anything abnormal with the system or if the OP simply listens a lot more quietly than most. To the OP: at the listening position, and tell us how far you are from the speakers.
There have been several threads discussing such devices, this being the furst to come up in a search:
This is all very helpful, thany you. I can see that i need to do a bit more research but will have a try on the sound pressure meter as a first step…
The average dB level, at the lowest setting I can have, is around 40 with a max of 60. And I sit somewhere between 2-3m from the speakers. I suspect that, having seen the sort of level that others enjoy, I am being unrealistic in wanting around 20/25 as a rough average! But you have given me this a very informative set of replies for which I am very grateful. I may dip my toe in the water with one of the other suggestions later to see if I could live with any change in quality!
Wow, average 40 dB at listening position seems incredibly low. What is your room background sound level (i.e. with no music playing)?
On a dbA weighting (which I think most refer to), that is equivalent to hearing a whisper from several feet away. How did you determine you want to achieve 20 - 25db average?
I am pushing average 85’s when listening at night. I get this maybe louder than some would want but doubtful my system would get to that magic 20-25 without the volume being turning to nothing and then just having the residual sound coming through.
It’s 25-30. Which makes me think that my earlier desire for 20-25 is ridiculously unrealistic. Maybe I should have gone for 35 ish!
It was just a guess based on about half of the way between 40 on setting 1 on the app and 0 being the mute. However I now realise (my reply to IB) that this is wrong
That is v helpful thank you
Yes that’s the sort of figure I expected for room - listening below 30 you’d only hear nothing or only the highest peaks in the music! Even listening at35dB avearge is just5-10dB above background, OK if music is pretty much constant level all the way through, but if you listened to music with a good dynamic range you’d completely lose the quiet passages.
With 88dB/W at 1m speakers, the average power level you’d be using would be around 0.03W, with highest peaks likely to be well under 1W. If that’s the level you want, and never playing much louder, it begs the question of whether the power amp you’re using is appropriate…
Out of curiosity, why do you want it at such a low level, and what made you pick your target? That to me is really just makes the music a backgound noise, such as might be used to mask other background noiss, rather than a level to listen to the music.
Also be aware that when listening at any level lower than 40dB, the effective frequency range of your hearing will be severely compromised:
https://chart-studio.plotly.com/~mrlyule/16/equal-loudness-contours-iso-226-2003/#/
Overall if only listening at those levels any effect on sound quality of adding attenuators, or of different powers amps, or even different sources, is unlikely to be heard.
IB - You are right - it is on those occasions when I just would like background music. And yes, I had begun to suspect whether the Unitilite was too powerful for my modest needs. But I am where I am and from your, and other helpful responses, notably Xanthe, I realise that I can either live with the higher volume, as I have done for 8 years or accept a loss in quality which would result from seeking to restrict the volume by a relatively crude means. On balance, I think that I’ll have a go at the latter and see how it goes. Many thanks indeed
Yes, straight out of the text book. I’ve done this and it made very little difference to the sound quality. But YMMV.
Clearly a situation that calls for a great pair of headphones.
1 Like