Recently we have seen many posts relating to the recommended gain settings for specific headphones, and the recommendations vary quite wildly. It is important to realise that there's no one universal setting that will suit everyone, as there are several more variables that impact it, e.g.:
- strength of the input signal
- listening volume preference
The best approach is to set it to one's own preferences, taking the following into consideration:
- if your input signal can be regulated, you should keep it relatively high. This will ensure that noise and interferences picked up by the cables as well as the noise level of the amp will be kept to the minimum. V281 is quite tolerant of strong signals, so there's minimal risk of overloading the input.
- keep the gain settings as low as possible, while ensuring that the volume pot has enough of useful range. Ideally your regular listening volume should be around 12 o'clock. If you have several headphones with varying sensitivity, set it so that the more sensitive hp (i.e. the one requiring less power) is around 12 o'clock and crank up the volume for the other one (of course if there's not enough volume for the more power hungry hp, you will have to increase the gain). You should avoid using very low volume pot settings - below 9 o'clock you won't have enough range to precisely set the volume, and channel imbalance is more likely to occur.
