How do I trim active monitors?

[Last Legend]

Right now I'm using a Presonus Central Station which DOES have speaker trim knobs but here's the catch....the darn thing sounds different on every single setting. There is no sense to it. So I'm thinking of getting something like the Coleman box, but if I do, how do I get the main pot to control the right 'zone'. Are other people using audiophile preamps after their Coleman or something? The trim on the Genelecs just aren't enough to get enough play out of the master pot. Thanks.

[Last Legend]

Ok, I just saw something in Geekslutz about just putting in a few resistors for a passive attenuator. This may be what is needed, but of course for monitoring I'd want some sort of audiophile, possibly already built solution.

[Brad Lunde]

Originally Posted by Last Legend

Right now I'm using a Presonus Central Station which DOES have speaker trim knobs but here's the catch....the darn thing sounds different on every single setting. There is no sense to it. So I'm thinking of getting something like the Coleman box, but if I do, how do I get the main pot to control the right 'zone'. Are other people using audiophile preamps after their Coleman or something? The trim on the Genelecs just aren't enough to get enough play out of the master pot. Thanks.

Well on the low cost side (but sounds good), there's the A Designs ATTY- stereo passive attentuator (w/mute). This sounds great and has very little signal degradation for $110 list. There's a new one from A Designs called ATTY'2D with 2 stereos and 3 monos in 1U, pricing is about $600. These devices don't track perfect channel to channel at the lowest levels because that gets into parts tolerance issues and costs a whole lot more money to make happen perfectly. The attentuators that can do that are exponentially more dough.

A new company called Shadow Hills has a unit in development, metal film resistor loaded attentuators that can track great at v.low levels, meters, stereo and surround versions, multiple speaker outs -but the cost would be in 3K-4K and up area. Very custom, similar quality to a mastering console.

Brad

[Dave Martin]

I second Brad's idea - I had a set of monitors in for evaluation and ended up using an ATTY on my Dynaudios to trim their levels to make a real comparison possible with the eval speakers. I heard no artifacts from the ATTY.

[Fletcher]

I may be out of my mind... but we have an ATTY on the "shop stereo" and I'll be damned if the taper doesn't seem off... like the first half of the knob turn has 70% of the gain changing ability and the second half of the knob turn has the other 30%... that, and the damn knob is tiny [but the mute function is awsome when someone calls and I'm next to the shop system]

[carbon111]

Have you tried something like this:
http://www.goldpt.com/
This has been a good solution for me to tame the hot levels between my DAW and my monitors. I can't say weather it would be *more* or *less* expensive than any of the other manufacturers but in the long run I would certainly say it was worth it for my application.

Regards, James

[Last Legend]

Goldpt is a bit pricy, The ATTY sounds about right but I'm a little paranoid about using anything with a potentiometer in it. I want to upgrade from the Central Station style. I found this Rothwell inline attenuator

http://www.rothwellaudioproducts.co....tenuators.html

but its only sold in the UK (I'm in USA) and I'd like something a bit more burly than -10dB, like -20-30dB. Anyone seen something like that? Otherwise I might try out the ATTY. Thanks for all the replys...I'm surprised this issue hasn't come up yet with the recent monitor controller craze.

[frist44]

$99 NHT PVC

Works great for me.

Brandon

[DAWgEAR]

I can confirm everything said above about the ATTY. The sound is clean with no coloration, but the L/R balance is off by several dB at medium to high levels of attenuation.

For me, I need more than just a little attenuation (Mackie HR824s) to get to 75-85dB SPL at my mix position, so the device is essentially unusable for me.

I think that this product has many good uses, but controlling levels on an active monitoring system where the L/R balance is critical is not one of them. YMMV.