Axxess AALC Universal RCA Level Bass/Gain Controller

I am still awaiting the arrival of my Sure Electronics 2X25w amplifier from Parts Express which is a Amazon business partner. The reasoning for ordering this device was to control the volume input from a CD,MP3 player or IPhone etc.. In my particular situation, I needed a device much like a potentiometer to control the output from a DVD player which has no volume control but relies on the receiver or ampliflier to either increase or decrease the sound level to the speakers. While the Sure Electronics amplifier has a set of dip switches to control the sound level output, there is no way to gradually increase or decrease manually. I did my research on Amazon and found three sound control devices which had RCA type jacks. It was a true miracle & good luck that I managed to select this particular product which works well and solves the problem of trying to hook up & solder a standard audio potentiometer to the Sure Electronics board. It is a simple matter of plugging both input and output, powering up your amplifier and have total control over your sound output and not totally destroy your speakers. This is a must have device. I tried it on my Lepai TA2020 and it works incredibly well. Highly recommended. 12/28/2011: Been having trouble with one of the inputs (white). For the past month I have been experiencing a bad case of no sound. Twisting and turning the white adapter sometimes solves the problem temporarily. (Red) input wire seems OK. However, it is kind of hard to enjoy any music or video without both set of speakers working. Pretty well made but defective. Make your choice carefully. I just received a similar volume control also bought through Amazon. Imc LC-1 Car Bass Amplifier which sells a lot less than this unit. I will be commenting on this unit once I get to give it a real road test. 12/18/2012: My Imc LC-1 Car Bass Amplifer finally went bad. Sound from the right channel was reduced by 50% and almost inaudible. Anyhow, just ordered (4) more units of the Axxess AALC Remote RCA Level Controller and was immediately back in business. Just buying and assembling a potentiometer and separate wires/rca plugs would put you back several dollars. Buy these now, there are really cheap and work great. Definitely hard to find except from Amazon. Works really well with my Sure 2x25W T-amp.

I've been capturing audio from my phono pre-amp with a USB audio capture device, and while that worked well, I noticed on some recordings, I had to turn the Windows USB audio mixer control way down on some recording captures that were just peaking out too high, or even flat-topping in the audio editor. So, even though my pre-amp has a wide dynamic range, it has no level control to set how much output there is. I find, for recording purposes, it made recording records a bit wild from time to time, especially high-velocity records like 45's and 78's. So I needed some more control without adding an expensive mixer, that might potentially add more coloration and noise. Furthermore, I wanted something I could adjust quickly without fussing in a computer dialogue box for. I've been making fine recordings and saving them as hi-res hi-bitrate WAV files on USB to play back in my home theater amp. This volume control gives me the additional control I need in a passive device that doesn't add color or noise to the signal path. The only thing is I needed the ends of the RCA cables to be males, not females. Whoever made this does not adhere to the industry peridigm of males are "outs" and female connections are "ins". So I had to buy a pack of male to male RCA adapters. to make this work. Anyway, problem is solved and I have much greater dynamic range on my USB capture device without overloading the input as before. At first I was concerned the higher groove velocity records might be overloading the input of my Cambridge Alva Solo pre-amp, but the waveforms I'm getting now show no evidence of that, so the Alva Solo just has a hot output, which is fine for the amp's line level in, it just wasn't so good for the USB converter device, which appears to have a sensitivity somewhere between microphone and line level (probably -30 or -40 dB). So some control is needed to bring the level down so as not to overload its input. This little unit fills the bill. By the time I would have designed the vari-pad, bought the parts, spent the time building and calibrating it, it would have cost me a lot more in parts and labor. I'm just glad someone out there makes this stuff at a super-affordable price and saves me the effort. It's clean, no hum, and is quiet. Love that it's a passive device, too. It does have tabs on the case, so it could be screwed to a cabinet to fasten it down. I just leave it float around near the laptop, it then is convenient to move it out of the way, if I need to. By the way, the input isolation appears to be designed appropriately, when turning down the control, no loading appears to be observed on the pre-amp output which is "Y'd" to the amp input and to the variable pad respectively. Kudos on that. It does the job and well!

This works great for studio monitors where the volume control knob is on the back of the speaker. Mine didn't come with any defects. I mounted it to my desk with a foam mounting square, and didn't even have to screw it into my desk. The volume control feels really smooth, and it doesn't affect sound quality at all. Also the volume control is not too sensitive like what other reviewers have said. I think it's perfectly fine. I always turn the volume control to max, and then turn my studio monitors up to about 30%, and then I would lower the volume on the volume control knob to my liking. 10 out of 10. I would recommend it to friends.

As an Electrical Engineer and an avid audiophile, I have been building my own version of this product for many years. It is simply a dual pot (slang term for a potentiometer)set up as a stereo audio attenuator. I was pleased when I found this one available. The unit is nicely built, and the price is reasonable. But no specifications were offered, so here is what I measured: The pot measured 52.7 K OHMS (left channel) and 52.1 K OHMS (right channel) LINEAR TAPER. I did not do any tests on how well the two sections "track" except at the mid-dial position, tracking was acceptable. This is within normal specifications for a (nominal) 50K Ohm dual potentiometer, Linear. Unfortunately, the pot is a LINEAR TAPER and not an AUDIO TAPER as it should be for a product sold as an audio product. AUDIO TAPER (also called LOGARITHMIC TAPER) is used for potentiometers that control audio volume because human ears respond to sound logarithmically, and thus, incremental adjustments of the knob will produce equal increments of volume (loudness) as perceived by humans. If a LINEAR TAPER pot is used as a volume control, the lowest settings of the knob will make proportionally greater changes in perceived volume, and the higher settings will produce a much smaller effect in volume. Thus, it may seem that the adjustments at the low end are very "sensitive" or "touchy" whereas the adjustments at the high end are relatively ineffectual. Both types will basically do the same job, but the AUDIO TAPER pots will do it better. If you want to learn more about the TAPER of potentiometers may I suggest reading the Wikipedia entry under "potentiometer" where it is all explained in greater detail. Bottom line; this product will work in most applications, depending on relative signal levels. Likely only the techies will find value in these comments

I have been an audiophile for over 15 years. While I have my main A/V set in the living room, I sometimes want to enjoy stereo music in my room, on my PC. The additional expense of a Preamplifier is out of my budget so I ordered a Musical Fidelity amp and wired it directly to my PC. Unfortunately, amps don't have volume control so I had to control the volume on the PC, which is very inconvenient. Devices like the PS3 couldn't be connected because PS3 doesn't let you adjust volume. Then I discovered this, and it really solved all my problems. This thing literally converts the amp to an "integrated amp" because now I have full control. If you have an external, audiophile DAC (digital to analog converter), that's fine too. You can either connect your PC directly to this volume control and then to the amp, or you can connect the PC to the DAC, and from the DAC to the amp. This little magical device really eliminates the need for another expensive preamp. I now have my PC, PS Vita, iPod, and PS3 all connected to the same Amp with this magically little volume knob.

I use a Fire TV Box at home for streaming. Just recently, both YouTube TV and the Paramount + subscriptions had very distorted audio while playing the audio thought my Yamaha Stereo Receiver and Polk Speakers. I tried the online Fire TV recommended audio settings to fix this issue to no avail. This audio distortion issues started just recently in past few months. I'm not sure if there are turf wars between rival steaming subscriptions and hardware companies or what but my hunch was right. The audio volume levels are to high and over driven for some subscription streaming services when using my Fire TV Box. I installed the RCA Level Controller between my TV's Audio Output RCA Jacks and the Audio input to my Stereo amp. It worked really well to correct this issue! I was able to turn down the volume using the volume knob on the Remote RCA Level Controller until the distortion went away on my Stereo Speakers. If any of you out there are experiencing these same problems with your TV to stereo amp interface, this will fix it.

It may work well for a line level input but won't work to modulate headphone level volume. I bout this to control headphone jack output from an Zoom H1 to my DSLR. It fails at that. the levels go from audible to off with no graduation. As I said, I bought this for a sort of off-label use. It may work very well for its intended us.

My new powered subwoofer had a range of loudness that was high for my quite small apartment. I put this volume control unit on the rca cable between the output (low level "rec") signal from my amplifier and the input jacks on the subwoofer back panel. Out of the box works fine, no batteries, no audio noise, file sound quality the same as straight in, only with volume adjusted to preference by turning the knob on the unit. A handy little unit.

It is a brilliant device for controlling your bass/gain of the subwoofer. Built quality is excellent plus the volume knob is made of metal. The device is not at all bulky and can be easily mounted anywhere on the car dashboard. What i liked most about this device is that if i turn the knob all the way to the zero, it turns the subwoofer bass to completely zero. No bass at all. Before using this device i used to have a dedicated on/off switch for my mono amplifier and if in case i didn't want the bass i used to turn off my amplifier so that the subwoofer will not be in use anymore. But now i just dont need to turn off the switch of my subwoofer amplifier, i just turn the knob to zero if i don't need any bass at all. Works exceptionally well, no loss of bass at all or any kind of disturbance in the bass output. I am using this device with an android car stereo and a sony mono amplifier. Just connect this device rca input side to the stereo rca output side and then connect this device rca output side to the amplifier/subwoofer rca input side and that's it. Definitely will recommend this to any one who needs a dedicated subwoofer bass controller.