Originally Posted by
Richard
You can try-ee and if no like-ee it costs yer nowt.
Your thinking is basically right, but an L pad is just two resistors, in this case one is variable. Otherwise the input stage would have to be buggered around with. Lower resistance / increase capacitance reset the gain around the first stage - too much agg, and you can't mess some things without altering the balance elsewhere. The amp is designed to look at a passive pot or switched attenuator, so just think of your active pre or processor as a source. I have a couple of customers with both cinema processors as source and another one with a valve pre (Croft I think) he insists on using and they all seem happy. In the case of a home cinema system there is even an advantage as it give another way the balance the channels if the room is squif. In an active system it is another way to balance the drivers instead of messing with the crossovers.