The Dimenuendo puts you in control!

With your new passive preamplifier with infrared remote control, you can relax, sit back and enjoy listening to your sound system. Control the volume level, signal source and mute without leaving your ideal listening position. And with no active components in the sound path, you can be sure your signal source has no coloration.

How does this all work? The Dimenuendo is based on a micro-computer which controls micro-miniature sealed low noise signal relays to ‘pick-off’ the selected attenuation levels. The only components in the sound path are the low noise resistors, 25 in each channel, and the relay contacts. The computer precisely controls the ‘make’ and ‘break’ of the relay contacts which eliminates any switching noise. Because the relays contacts are isolated from the control circuitry, no DC path exists between the switched analog signals and the rest of the control circuits. Since the system is designed to operate in stereo we actually have 25 resistors in two chains, one chain for the left and one for the right. (Note this provides 26 level changes.)

To minimize switching level changes between the selected channels, each non-active channel is loaded with the same impedance as the active channel’s resistive ladder load. In this way when an input channel is selected no load change exists between active and non-active channels. We use the same micro miniature relays for channel selection as we do for the attenuation chain. (31 relays in all)

The micro-computers software decodes the IR signals from the remote control. Since the computer knows which resistor in the ladder has been selected we can give an indication of ‘volume’ level. We do this by ‘modulating’ the level LED. As described before, no path exists between the analog signals and the digital control circuits, ensuring minimal noise coupling.

Another unique feature of the Dimenuendo is that when you mute or un-mute, the computer actually ‘steps’ through the resistor attenuation chain. In this way we have a ‘noise free’ mute function.

Custom operational functions, attenuation impedance, attenuation step values and IR device type available (Customization charge applies)