Full knob on cmoy amp or higher volume on device?

You should keep the player volume high. Ideally you'd want to keep the cmoy above 9 or 10 o'clock to minimize any channel balance issues, and it might be a good idea to adjust player volume if you'd be turning the amp lower than that.

Anyone else want to chime in on this (and maybe why this is) because I was wondering the same thing.

My cMoy with a 12V regulated DC power supply is connected to my iPod (running rockbox) through a Fiio L3 LOD cable.

When the cMoy is maxed out (dial at 5 o'clock), I listen to music at about -88dB on the iPod, which is almost as low as it will go.

At about half volume on the cmoy (dial at 12 o'clock) I run the iPod at -77dB.

At a little less than 1/4 volume on the cmoy (dial at 9 o'clock) I run the iPod at about -60dB.

When I used to run it through the iPod's headphone jack, I would listen to it at about -30dB with the cMoy maxed out.

It depends a bit on the equipment.

This is my view:

If the source does not have any distorsion issues when cranked to the max and the amp can handle the input then that will be potentially best for the following reasons:

• reduced noise floor
• Highest resolution (bit depth) if it is a device which controls the volume by attenuating before converting to analog. Only 100% volume means full bit integrity.

I have a BSG CMOY with dual inputs. 1 for headphone level and 1 for line level (less gain).

I use the line level for both my USB DAC and Android phone (at max volume). In this case the headphone amp merely works as a buffer. It takes the load (current) of the source and drives the headphones at a level which is usually at a lower or the same volume as when I would plug it straight into the source.

Works best for me but different equipment (and ears) could have a different optimum.

When I used a cheapish android tablet I had better results at 60-70% than 100% as it was probably not as capable at providing the the full output voltage.