RCA couplers have arrived

The last part of the in-line attenuator has arrived.

This thing converts the female connector on the attenuator to a male to save using one extra cable, which has benefits cost and performance wise.

Why didn't I use a male connector on the attenuator in the first place and instead used two female connectors instead?, you may ask.

Well, the dimensions of the front and back are 15 x 13mm. It's actually rather compact for a DIY-ed solution. And it has to be in order to have the most compatibility. These dimensions are pretty tight for a male RCA connector. I did try to use a male connector, but the moment I on-ed the 1cm drill it cracked through the whole thing.

Even for the socket I had to look for one with a really thin body, so that the nut can fit inside the enclosure.


How the finished thing looks.


The thing in action.

So far I've tried it on two systems - the one that you see in the pic, and another one which I shall not disclose now. Lets call it system X for now.

Why am I mentioning this? Well, there are unexpected side findings. Apart from the obvious 20dB reduction in volume.

On system X, it solved a bit of balance issues (due to volume control at too low positions) as expected, at the same time the soundstage opened out/the sound became wide/sue me my audiophile language sucks.

I attributed this to the balance issue being solved - when more sound is coming from one speaker, the image feels less spacious. And/or maybe having two speakers at the same volume brings out mids and some bass better.

On the system you see in the pic, the bass became more controlled and more powerful. Could be due to the same thing as above.

*Note - none of these claims have been blind-tested.

If avoiding channel imbalance issues results in these benefits, there could be some weight in why stepped attenuators sound better than potentiometers (notice the commonalities between claimed improvements of using stepped attenuators vs my thing).

However, again, this is untested, and those who calibrate their speakers to +-0.5dB would know the truth.