General > General Technical Chat
Our knobs go to 11 - but which way round?
TimFox:
As an undergraduate in the late '60s, I ran the microphones and lights for the Sunday chapel services.
The chapel's PA system was a high-class Altec-Lansing system, with a vacuum-tube mike mixer and power amplifier located at the front end of the sanctuary and a remote (opto-isolated) volume control knob in the balcony.
I would enter from the front end of the building, turn on the system at a master power switch, and walk to the stairs at the rear to ascend to my perch at the volume control and light switches.
One Sunday, when I was half-way to the back of the auditorium, there was a horrible feedback screech (after about 10 sec warm-up) and I ran back to the amplifier to kill power.
I went upstairs and found the knob turned full CW (maximum volume), which I reset to CCW, returned to turn the amplifier power on, and went back to the control and ran the system normally.
This happened once more. The third Sunday, I started upstairs at the volume control, found it at CW again, and started everything properly.
The elderly organist complained to me, and I replied "some idiot keeps turning the volume control to maximum while I'm gone".
She was taken aback, since the idiot was herself: Altec-Lansing had labelled the knob in dB attenuation, with CCW = 40 dB attenuation and CW = 0.
She had interpreted that as 0 being minimum volume (at CW).
xrunner:
My Samsung TV shows volume attenuation: as the volume decreases the number at the bottom right of the screen gets "bigger" (even though it's a negative number). Well, it might seem that way to the mass consumer, to us it is getting more and more negative, which means more attenuation. That's correct.
It does have a "-" sign in front of the number and then a bit more to the left a "speaker" symbol. But I'm positive many people will not think that much about it, all they see is a number getting larger, which to them should mean "louder". :-//
nfmax:
--- Quote from: TimFox on June 23, 2022, 03:48:58 pm ---As an undergraduate in the late '60s, I ran the microphones and lights for the Sunday chapel services.
The chapel's PA system was a high-class Altec-Lansing system, with a vacuum-tube mike mixer and power amplifier located at the front end of the sanctuary and a remote (opto-isolated) volume control knob in the balcony.
I would enter from the front end of the building, turn on the system at a master power switch, and walk to the stairs at the rear to ascend to my perch at the volume control and light switches.
One Sunday, when I was half-way to the back of the auditorium, there was a horrible feedback screech (after about 10 sec warm-up) and I ran back to the amplifier to kill power.
I went upstairs and found the knob turned full CW (maximum volume), which I reset to CCW, returned to turn the amplifier power on, and went back to the control and ran the system normally.
This happened once more. The third Sunday, I started upstairs at the volume control, found it at CW again, and started everything properly.
The elderly organist complained to me, and I replied "some idiot keeps turning the volume control to maximum while I'm gone".
She was taken aback, since the idiot was herself: Altec-Lansing had labelled the knob in dB attenuation, with CCW = 40 dB attenuation and CW = 0.
She had interpreted that as 0 being minimum volume (at CW).
--- End quote ---
See also: BBC faders
PlainName:
--- Quote ---My Samsung TV shows volume attenuation
--- End quote ---
Perhaps the TV is meant to be a sub-part of a system. If the intention is for the sound to be piped via a hifi system, say, then typically you have a master volume on the hifi which you use to set the desired output level. The volume control on the sub-parts (TV, tape player, etc) would not be adjusted once set. In that kind of situation the device output would be assumed to be max, so if you need to adjust it at all, to match all the other devices, you will be attenuating it.
bill_c:
Get a calculator (or keyboard with number pad), hold it next to your phone dial pad...
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