Speaking of the Mills resistors:
After further evaluation I have removed my Rothwell inline RCA attenuators, as the sound out of my speaker amp is better without them. The background seems blacker and there is more clarity. Then I installed the 10 ohm Mills resistors to equalize the impedance and the imaging improved, I think that there is more depth to the sound now. The unfortunate part is that I am now driving my HE-6 at 9 am on the dial without the attenuators, as the resistors are in parallel and not in series but I can live with that. I would prefer to be closer to my amp's "sweet spot" volume-wise, but it sounds great and there is no channel imbalance. Even if there was some imbalance, the amp has dual mono volume pots so I could compensate.
My next goal on that system would be to upgrade my DAC to a balanced one that will upsample to at least 96k (using Devilsound NOS DAC now) so I can adjust my volume down out of the computer digitally without sacrificing any sound quality. The DAC I have set my sights on is the Balanced Havana which would provide a multitude of benefits besides upsampling: a balanced source would match up better with my balanced speaker amp, and it has a tube output stage which my SS amp benefits from as well. This would allow me to drop the tube stage which does increase the volume of the Devilsound preamp-style.
But even at 9 am on the dials the sound is better than ever out of my HE-6 now, many thanks to
wuwhere for helping me sort this out so far. I am already starting to like this rig as much or better than my other setup which wasn't the case before.
I do have another question however, as my math skills have evidently declined somewhat, I think it's an algebra thing (I was better at geometry lol). I am trying to figure out how much power I am putting into the 50 ohm HE-6 exactly with my 45 wpc amp:
8 ohms, 45 wpc
16, 22.5
32, 11.25
50, X
64, 5.625
I think
X may be 7.2 (wpc) but I'm not sure, my secondary conclusion is 8.4 wpc. But I wouldn't be surprised if it was something else entirely. If there's anybody that has the math skills to confirm the value of
X I would appreciate it.
Also I think that with my resistors in parallel I am not attenuating the volume like I would be if these resistors were wired in series. I believe that the sound quality is better this way?