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Lightspeed Attenuator - Best Preamp Ever?

The question is a bit rhetorical. No preamp is the best ever, and much depends on system context. I am starting this thread beacuase there is a lot of info on this preamp in a Music First Audio Passive...thread, an Slagle AVC Modules...thread and wanted to be sure that information on this amazing product did not get lost in those threads.

I suspect that many folks may give this preamp a try at $450, direct from Australia, so I thought it would be good for current owners and future owners to have a place to describe their experience with this preamp.

It is a passive preamp that uses light LEDs, rather than mechanical contacts, to alter resistance and thereby attenuation of the source signal. It has been extremely hot in the DIY community, since the maker of this preamp provided gernerously provided information on how to make one. The trick is that while there are few parts, getting it done right, the matching of the parts is time consuming and tricky, and to boot, most of use would solder our fingers together if we tried. At $450, don't bother. It is cased in a small chassis that is fully shielded alloy, it gets it's RF sink earth via the interconnects. Vibration doesn't come into it as there is nothing to get vibrated as it's passive, even the active led's are immune as they are gas element, no filaments. The feet I attach are soft silicon/sorbethane compound anyway just in case.

This is not audio jewelry with bling, but solidly made and there is little room (if any) for audionervosa or tweaking.

So is this the best preamp ever? It might be if you have a single source (though you could use a switch box), your source is 2v or higher, your IC from pre-amp to amp is less than 2m to keep capaitance low, your amp is 5kohm input or higher (most any tube amp), and your amp is relatively sensitive (1v input sensitivity or lower v would be just right). In other words, within a passive friendly system (you do have to give this some thought), this is the finest passive preamp I have ever heard, and I have has many ranging form resistor-based to TVCs and AVCs.

In my system, with my equipment, I think it is the best I have heard passive or active, but I lean towards prefering preamp neutrality and transparency, without loosing musicality, dynamics, or the handling of low bass and highs.

If you own one, what are your impressions versus anything you have heard?

Is it the best ever? I suspect for some it may be, and to say that for a $450 product makes it stupidgood.
pubul57
pubul57 OP
3,712 posts
 
"It's personal taste and system synergy, this fiction that there is an objective standard to what music really sounds like is so silly." That is true and I'm not sure anyone, or even George, has spoken about what music really sounds like, his claim is that the LSA will permit the signal to go from the source to the amp with minimal distortion, whihc seems to be a measurable claim beyond subjectivity, which is a different statement, he is not making claims about musicality or what you will like, it seems like a more objective statment that the signal will be less adulterated, unless you have impedance matching issues which will be a distotion of its own, as Ralph points out.

I am somewhat agnostic about the issue of neutrality versus color, I just want my system to sound good and I find the $450 LSA sounds as good with my Music Reference amps as with the much more expensive and complex linestages I have used; that is why I think others should try it if they have a sensitive and high-input impedance tube amp with short ICS, they can get great sound for little money. And, I continue to use my Atma pre with Atma amp because nothing has sounded better with my Merlins and the warm Cardas cables - a great match for an VSM owner.
pubul57 OP
3,712 posts
 
Ralph, why have gain with a CD player with 2v or more output? Any reason? You make a good argument for why you might need a buffered linestage (though Roger Modjeski still advised me to avoid a buffered stage in my setup with his amp - he was perfectly willing to build me one if I insisted), but gain? What for?
georgehifi's avatar
georgehifi
4,966 posts
 
Atmasphere IOW, as you reduce the volume, **no matter how good the passive is**, you will loose bass and impact. This is why a buffer between the volume control and the interconnect cable is so important; as you reduce the volume setting the bass and impact is not affected.
Atmasphere

Not totaly correct sunshine, the ear becomes less linear at low levels and this is why the "loudness switch" was invented to boost the bass quite a bit and the highs slightly also, but these circuits like all active circuits, introduced too much of their own colouration/distortions as well for high end audio use. So now you'll only find them in car stereos and midfi home equiptment.
almarg's avatar
almarg
8,673 posts
 
George, you and Ralph are talking about two different things. You are referring to the Fletcher-Munson effect. Ralph is referring to the increase in output impedance of a passive preamp that occurs as the volume control POSITION is reduced from maximum, to achieve a NORMAL listening volume. That increase in output impedance increasing the effects of the cable that is being driven.

That said, it's not clear to me why high output impedance + high cable capacitance would affect bass frequencies. Certainly if both parameters are extreme enough upper treble response could be affected, due to the two parameters combining to produce an RC low pass filter effect. And if the input impedance of the destination component varies significantly with frequency, or is too low with respect to preamp output impedance, bass performance could conceivably be affected. But I'd be interested in further explanation of how high output impedance could interact with cable parameters to affect bass frequencies.

Regards,
-- Al
atmasphere's avatar
atmasphere
7,068 posts
 
Yes, Al, George seems to have missed my point entirely.

If you think about what happens when you install a resistance after a capacitor, then you have a start at what is happening with any passive system. The cap has a variable impedance vs frequency, which changes depending on the time constants in the system that it is part of. At some low frequency the impedance will be seen to increase. This is how capacitors are used to roll off low frequencies in equalizers and how the low frequency poles in active electronics are set up.

When you add to that impedance, you are changing the timing constant. This is simple math. In effect you are increasing the output impedance of the source. When that happens, you get a bass rolloff when that resulting composite source interacts with the input impedance of the amp.

The thing to note here is that none of this has anything to do with the *quality* of the passive control. It can be the best out there (and the Lightspeed is certainly on the short list in that regard) and this will still happen because these effects arise out of simple physical laws **not the quality of the control**.
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