Volume controls? Yep. Volume controls.

Audio Note’s more expensive pre-amplifiers have high-performance and awesome-looking volume controls. Hand soldered resisters are used for discrete levels of attenuation – arranged in a couple of different geometries that are pleasing to the eye [well, MY eyes anyway!] as well as the ear.

The red, square-looking one in the photos has more “steps” and allows for finer control of the volume between soft and loud. AN believes in high-gain preamps and so do we, but we wanted a little more control over the playback and recently had Nick at True Sound install the red volume control in our M9 Phono preamp.

We are liking the change. 🙂

It is taking  us both awhile to get used to setting the volume 5  clicks in and still being able to hear ourselves talk [which can be a good thing and a bad thing ;-)].

OK. Enough with the spouse-humor [sorry Neli :-)]. We also upgraded the M9’s umbilical cord between its power supply and control unit a few months ago, a major improvement.

Audio Note U.K. doesn’t stay still and keeps improving things. Which is good. Because after some amount of time, I am always ready for something that brings me closer to the epiphanies of hope and beauty that music can deliver to world-weary tired souls – like mine. And maybe like yours too.

Going through old directories finding tons of photos that never made it to the blog. Here is just a couple of them.

The M9 RIAA is a two box phono stage from Audio Note U.K. which is by far the best phone stage we have heard with respect to revealing [aka letting through. aka not stepping all over] the parts of the music that make music sound like music. What more could one ask for? [a serious question. Can’t think of anything!]

This now lives in Fred Crowder‘s system [M9 RIAA reviewed at DAGOGO].