[fredbloggstwo]

"blackburst" wrote in message
...
On Aug 14, 6:39 am, Mike Rivers wrote:

I very much appreciate the advice given by all of the posters here. I
fully understand the comments by some that it's something that can be
easily accomplished with a soldering iron and a few resistors. But let
me add this perspective: In the audio and video fields, some people
gravitate toward becoming strong as ENGINEERS, and some become strong
as OPERATORS. In the audio field, my engineering skills are tolerable,
but not deep, while my operating skills are very good. (With the right
adapter kits, etc, I can match levels, etc and make things work well.)
In my chosen field, video, my engineering skills are excellent, as are
my operating skills. Rather than experiment with different value
resistors in a jerry-rig fashion, I would simply prefer to have a box
that will give me control of the level.

Skills: I can trust a box designed by experts better than my own
guesswork.

Flexibility: We may not always use this tuner, or this FM station. I
want to able to set the level BY EAR, to match adjacent channels, and
to match our actual program content.

Cost: We can afford it, and it's worth it for the flexibility.

Time: I'm something of a one-man-band. I spend a lot of time managing,
and it takes less time to just get a box.

Futu I won't always be at this job. The box with pots will be
easier for my successor to understand and operate.

But yes, I understand that a neophyte should be able to rig something
up. Maybe I'm just lazy.



fredbloggstwo wrote:
I would have thought 'most' likely to work if the input impedance is
known,
and using good practice of attenuating as near to the destination as
possible, e.g. inside the device connector, would have minimal
capacitance
effect within the audio band.

It's nice that so many people know the theory, but disappointing that so
few
actually have experience, or understand the theory well enough to know
what
matters or what doesn't.

This is a very simple problem, and any of the proposed solutions that
would
work at all will work equally well for the application. You're not doing
laboratory
measurements to within a couple of dB of the theoretical noise floor,
you're
just listening to the radio.

The fly in the ointment is that there's no inexpensive universal
off-the-shelf solution,
so unless the original poster is willing to spend $50-$100 to solve a
trivial problem,
a do-it-yourself approach is usually what we "pros" recommend. But if
he's not sure
which end of the soldering iron to hold, or doesn't have the necessary
tools to
determine the correct value of the ten cent resistors he needs (nobody
can simply
give him a number without knowning very specific details of the system),
then he's
best served with what's available off-the-shelf even though most of us
would not
take that approach.

Since I know that any source with peaks above +18 dBu will overload the
front end
of my portable recorder, I pack a set of cables with 10 dB attenuators
built into the
connectors. It took me about half an hour to make them (but 50 years of
experience
to know how).

--
If you e-mail me and it bounces, use your secret decoder ring and reach

Good for you - its your trade off of time and skill versus money. The box
suggested by Marko seems a good buy to me and if you want the flexibility I
would go with it in your shoes.

Happy listening - which is what it is all about.

Mike