Tydeligvis ikke alle som har lik oppfatning av tvc
OK, regarding sound, lets first look at some of the other options out there:
1) Regular carbon pots sound mediocre at best. This kind of volume control rolls off on top, and adds huge amounts of bass bloat. If one of these sounds right in your system, then I am confident to say it’s masking issues elsewhere – a bright tube stage for example. No, I am not opposed to mix and match, and in actual fact some degree of mix and match is all that can be achieved. But there are degrees, and in my experience, one should try to mix and match within a margin of neutrality. The standard type carbon pots are way off neutral, and therefore, are best avoided.
2) Noble/Alps Blue Velvet pots are OK, but not so great really. These are over priced in terms of what you get, and anyone serious about audio should want to move on and up from here (unless remote control is the ‘deal breaker’).
3) In my experience, Bourns plastic pots are a decent, cheap alternative to Noble/Alps, and this is what I was using prior to the new Elma switch (I also had a Blue Velvet some years back). One way to improve on the performance of a pot is to wire it in a shunt configuration, where typically a 50K resistor (i.e. half the value of the pot) is wired in series with the top of a100K pot. The result is close to that of a 50K pot, one where the wiper blade only features in the shunt-to-ground part of the circuit. I had my Bourns wired exactly this way, with a 50K Audio Note tantalum as series resistor, and this performed fairly OK. But, like many a polypropylene capacitor (but not all), the Bourns pot has a presence region somewhere in the upper midrange – a subtle kind of 'shout', that you won't notice until you upgrade. Highs are not bad, but ultimately lack fine detail, and spatial information is somewhat blurred, and bass is a little fat and lacks true punch down in the lows. In truth, everything is a bit grainy and blurred, yet pretty darn good for the price!
4) HiFi Collective Elma/Takman attenuator kit, which is what I bought. I am blown away. Smiley face! BUY WITH CONFIDENCE. This attenuator kit ROCKS!!! But I am sure there must be other good attenuator options out there.
5) Finally there is the autoformer, or TVC (transformer volume control) approach, as touted by some. Well I am sorry if this sounds cold, but I have my doubts. I tried a TVC in my system, one made by a company that is hugely celebrated by the fans, and I have to say it did not perform well. I drove this device from my line stage, which has a Zout of 1K, and which in my book ought to have been low enough, yet results were rather poor. In an A/B test, my carbon pot was a fair bit better. What’s better? Better is better, I mean better in every conceivable way. Possibly, I had needed to drive the TVC from a lower Z? Fine, but my friend who bought this device tells that he tried every conceivable way to drive it, including ultra low Z options, yet consistently sound was poor. I should think there must a way to get this thing to work, but personally I cant be bothered, and am happy to leave this device to those who think that putting mediocre interstage transformers EVERYWHERE is good for sound – poor confused souls!