Paradigm Active Gain Settings (1 Viewer)

[Vince Chan]

Here's a question for fellow Paradigm Active owners:

How have you set your gain settings on your amp and processor/receiver? I have the gain dial behind the speaker set to max and the volume on my preamp set low. Is this the correct setting I should be using?

 

[Chriss M]

my undestanding of gain comes from car audio, where almost all amps have adjustable gain controls, so someone will correct me if i am wrong...there theoretically should be one and only 1 correct gain setting for each amp and pre-amp combo. The idea would be to set the volume on the preamp to maximum level before it begins to add distortion, and then turn the gain level on the amp as high as possible until distortion is audible. This is better done with electronics than by ear, but you should be able to get it close enough. Once you have the gain set, you should not need to adjust it again unless you switch preamps.

 

[Ron Alcasid]

I think if you have the gain set correctly when you can adjust the level at the pre amp let's say +3 dB and the output of the Active will also be +3 dB. If it's more then there too much gain. If it's less then there's not enough. Does that make sense?

I just looked at the back of my Active 40 and it only has a speaker level adjustment, which is not the same as gain. I have the levels at the preamp set to 0 dB and use the speaker level control for balancing.

 

[Vince Chan]

Ooops, I did mean the 'speaker level' setting, I had mistakenly thought this to be the same as 'gain', as that's what my dealer called that dial anyways..
I have a set of Active/40's too by the way

 

[Ron Alcasid]

Who knows it may very well be a gain control. Mislabeling seems to be a tradition in consumer electronics, brightness/black level on TV's for example.:b

 

[Zbigniew]

In my case I have 2 pairs of A-40 and a pair of Studio-ADP (fed with Parasound 1500HTA), with Lexicon MC-1 as processor.

In order to have all speakers level balanced, I had to leave Active at middle setting - if you rotate volume/gain pot, there is a notch at 12 position; it is neutral position.

Adding any gain on speakers forced me to increase relative level of sides/ADP on preamp.

Running all 6 of them in party/6 channel stereo makes really a lot of noise .

_zjt