Solid State Preamp Reviews

Sidebar 1: A Matter of Volume

While there are 200 available level settings, the readouts are simply 0–200; they do not directly relate to decibels. That's a bit of a handicap for the reviewer and the audiophile who does a lot of comparison listening, but not much. To relate level settings to decibels, I simply fed a 1kHz test signal into the Consonance and measured the output of each channel for each of the 200 steps. While this was a bit tedious, it gave me a chart showing the relative level change from one step to the next. It also indicated very precise channel-to-channel tracking. From that point on, it was a simple matter to raise or lower the overall system playback level by a fixed number of dB by noting the existing level on the front panel of the Consonance, relating that to a relative dB level in the chart, moving up or down the desired number of dB on the same chart, then picking off the "number" setting on the Consonance which related to this new level.

The implications of this range far. If you know the difference in sensitivity between any two components—preamps excepted, of course—you can easily compensate for that difference by a corresponding dB level change in the Consonance. And the levels will be close. The step changes in the Consonance, as I have stated elsewhere, vary from 0.1dB to 0.25dB over most of the range, widening only at extreme settings. I haven't given the specific readings which I measured here for each of the 200 steps because they will likely vary slightly from sample to sample—Rowland states only that they are approximately 0.25dB per step. This is all the information you really need for normal use. If you need to determine the actual dB change per step in your sample, you will have to measure it yourself, or find someone else who can.—Thomas J. Norton