[nmop]

Hello folks, this is a very noob question but I have to ask somewhere. What volume settings should be at what to minimize distortion?
 
My setup is winamp -> creative titanium HD -> O2 amp -> HD600
 
should my windows and winamp settings be set to 100% and then control volume only with O2 or?
 
The info from my O2 amp says:
 
"For maximum sound quality, use a line level source, or turn your audio player’s volume up very high
(60-80%). Volume should always be controlled from the amplifier."
 
 
Please advise.

 

[MindsMirror]

Distortion is not really the issue. The reason for setting the source to high volume is to reduce noise. You want the source volume to be high and the gain on the amp to be low so that any noise that gets introduced to the signal will be amplified as little as possible.
 
You don't want to set your amp's gain too low though. At a very low setting, the volume control pot could be very sensitive, could have channel imbalance, and might be non linear. So if you are using very sensitive headphones where your amp's volume needs to be set very low, you might want to lower the source volume to avoid those issues.