Some attenuators are resistive, others are reactive, and most of them are passive.
Passive means that the attenuator’s electronics do not require a power supply.
Resistive means that the power out of your amplifier is tamed by the presence of one (or several) resistors within the signal path. The load impedance plays a huge role on the sound, and a resistive attenuator will make the tone somewhat darker with loss in the high and low frequencies content of the audio signal.
Reactive means that reactive elements (transformers, coils and/or capacitors) are used instead of mere resistors. With this technology, the damping factor will decrease with the level of attenuation. Most of the time, a reactive attenuator results in loss of character and fidelity, a ”muddy" sound and other unwanted effects.
Another downside of passive/resistive/reactive attenuators is the way the listening level is controlled - usually by a stepped potentiometer which does not allow for precise volume setting and limits you to a set of fixed attenuation levels.
RE-ACT™ stands for "Reactive-Active Attenuator", which means it uses a reactive load and active overall schematics. In effect, the RE-ACT™ can be described as the combination of two elements: a reactive loadbox inherited from the critically acclaimed Torpedo Live series, followed by an ultra-low-distortion, wide-band, low-noise solid-state amplifier based on a widely used HiFi architecture.
The role of this system is to present a speaker-like impedance to your amplifier, dissipate the power, then re-amplify it to the desired volume. This design offers a number of advantages over resistive/passive ones:
- The amp is always connected to a fixed impedance, which is as close as possible to a real speaker impedance
- As the impedance does not change with the attenuation, the tone of your amp stays the same
- The volume you hear in the room can be set continuously resulting in REAL master-volume control (SPEAKER parameter) after your amplifier’s master volume
- The speaker-output impedance of your amplifier is independent from the speaker impedance of the actual speaker cabinet you plug into the Torpedo Reload. This opens up a a world of creative possibilities when it comes to cabinet mixing
Having issues?
Our support team is here to assist you! For any enquiries, please head over to our Help Desk and submit a ticket to speak directly to one of our in-house specialists.