"ScottW" wrote in message
ups.com...

Moron claims his Sony player doesn't even have the balls for line
level output.

The man says a lot of crazy things.

reference his response to Bret's comment:

Most power amps will go full output with 1.5V rms. VTL in their book
specify they design for input sensitivity of 775 mV as I recall.

Morons response:
Yes, but from practical experience with Sony ES players, I can tell you
that those with 5532 outputs cannot do it cleanly.

In fact NE5532's can drive 7.75 volts into a 500 ohm load with exceptionally
low distortion as shown by the following authoritative reference:

http://www.dself.dsl.pipex.com/ampins/webbop/5532.htm

7.75 volts is about 14 dB higher than the input sensitivity of a typical
power amp. IOW if you apply a signal that peaks at 7.75 volts to most power
amps, the amp is way far into clipping.

It's possible that Bob is basing his thesis on equipment that is simply
defective or otherwise not living up to its potential.

So I have a couple issues with Bob's premise.

1) His crappy CD can't even provide std line level output cleanly.

In my experience Bob suffers from hysteria which causes him to leap from
faulty conclusion to faulty conclusion (example given above).

The usual problem with driving power amps directly from CD players is that
while there is more than enough gain to drive the power amp to full output
and maybe a few dB into clipping on the loudest passages, people are used to
working with active preamps with about 20 dB of gain. A lot of this gain is
sacrificed by the fact that most people aren't comfortable turning the gain
full up, to about 5 o'clock. IME most people's perceived comfortable full
output is about 1 o'clock.

2) Attenuating said output with a pot isn't likely to do anything to
clean it up.

Agreed.

3) Adding extra gain later to compensate will also amplify the noise
floor of the player reducing overall system S/N.

Any subsequent linear gain will elevate the signal and the noise
identically, which would maintain system SNR or dynamic range. Losses are
due to any noise that is added by the gain stage itself.