On 8/16/2011 8:56 AM, James Perrett wrote:
To get the gain range needed without cramming all the
gain beyond 3 o'clock requires an impossible to obtain
taper. I assume that the audio interface market is too
small for any affordable potentiometer manufacturer to make a
potentiometer with the required characteristics.
This is of course a matter of design. Who says you have to
use a pot? or just a pot? You could have a pot with a
pretty smooth 15 or 20 dB range and a three position coarse
gain or attenuator switch. Or you could have a
multi-position rotary switch and let the whiners complain
about the gain changing in steps (while others praise it
because you can set two channels to "exactly" the same gain).
But even so, an order of 10,000 isn't too small for a pot
manufacturer, and when you put 8 of them on a box (or 16, or
24, or more on a console) you'll go through them pretty fast
in today's market. And when you have three of four
manufacturers who would use it, it wouldn't cost that much
more than what's off the shelf.
The real problem is that manufacturers feel compelled to cut
the cost to the bone so they can sell against the
competition (who has cut the cost to the bone). So a custom
pot or a switch goes out the window.
--
"Today's production equipment is IT based and cannot be
operated without a passing knowledge of computing, although
it seems that it can be operated without a passing knowledge
of audio." - John Watkinson
http://mikeriversaudio.wordpress.com - useful and
interesting audio stuff