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April 24th, 2007, 16:03 GMT · By

How To: Not Have $160 Any Longer - NHT PVC PC

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This is the low-end version of the real deal and it's a volume knob selling for $160
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I have been working with sound for almost 14 years now and I really did good sound. I have even started to be more and more into the audiophile gear, be it fancy speakers, amps, AVRs or headphones, even simple tech facts which render better listening experience.

But no one has to be an audio engineer to think right about money: money is meant to be spent, all right but I guess that most people want to see proper results of the money they spend, am I right? Now, when you can clearly see the goal you're heading to or at least have a vague idea on what the result
of your financial "endeavor" will be, things are OK, because you know or pretend you know where and why your money has changed owners.

But when someone comes in and asks for 160 dollars for a friggin' volume control pot, that's one eyebrow raised from me. Wait a minute, but what kind of potentiometer is this, could I ask. And the only answer given back relates to the NHT manufacturer and then some pile of rather cheap reasons for which I should hate the volume controls on my PC and pay $160 for a device to crowd up my desk even more... Not nice...

The back of the wonder-unit
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The PVC (Passive Volume Control) PC is a volume controlling unit for the output of your PC; was I clear enough? NHT simply claims that the volume slider on your PC is reducing the sound quality. Period. No further detail! If they say it is so maybe we should all storm the web stores and buy PVC PC because we don't want our sound made worse by the computer volume, do we?

What's really funny about the viral wannabe marketing for this volume controller is that on one hand, the manufacturer of such revolutionary system does not come with physical evidence to sustain the assertions;and on the other hand, not only the producer says you suck if you don't buy their knob: you're big loser if you don't go PVC Pro! For $20 more, that is...

Phew...! You know what they say... "it's not the one asking for the ridiculous price, it's the one paying that price".

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READER COMMENTS:


Comment #1 by: nuv on 02 Jul 2009, 06:46 UTC reply to this comment

YOU claim to be an Audiophile and yet you have no idea why this product is good OMG
you are literally fooling yourself how about you do a little research and find out that yes volume controls are very important!! the point that this is only $160 dollars for the quality that it give is amazing..inside that little black box PVC PRO just two of the components cost $70 US each and not to mention that it uses an ALPS potentiometer

you know you can buy Passive volume controllers for grands!!! not just hundreds


Comment #2 by: MH on 12 Oct 2009, 23:50 UTC reply to this comment

Wow, this is laughable. Do you know of anything called ground isolation (which lowers interference) and impedance matching (which improves sound quality)? Do you know that lowering volume with PC's own volume control lowers bit rate, a process that degrades sound greatly? A passive volume control with transformers is an important part of the audio chain and normally can not be had for a such low price.

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