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How to choose an attenuator

I have an Oppo Sonica DAC which has 4 Vrms through the balanced outputs and a Classe Amp2 (and a CAV-180 for that matter) which takes 1.4 Vrms maximum input without clipping. I was recommended to use 24dB attenuators to reduce voltage; but this seemed very high to me (based on online voltage to dB converters). Is there another criterion apart from the voltage?
Thanks in advance for any thoughts, as I am not very knowledgeable in this!
kislali
georgehifi's avatar
georgehifi
4,966 posts
 
Both your Amp2 and CAV180 have very high input impedances, perfectly suited for passive preamps (which a fixed attenuator is in a way) just that you can't adjust it.
 
Why not have it all, and have an adjustable one like the Schiit Sys, $49
http://www.schiit.com/products/sys

Cheers George
kislali OP
5 posts
 
Thanks georgehifi, but that comes with RCA. My whole idea was to be able to used the balanced outputs. When I use SE outputs the Vrms is down to 2 and is more manageable anyway.

There are 10, 15, 20, 25, 30 etc dB attentuators and I would prefer to just buy one pair with the correct values and forget about them.

According to a calculator (http://aetechron.com/calculator-Volt2dB.html) a 10dB correction should be right, but then there are other criteria like impedance so I get puzzled a bit.
willemj
1,036 posts
 
Why would you use attenuators if your Sonica has a variable output?
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