Two Notes Torpedo Reload User Manual page 17

2018/06/02 13:16
Passive means that the attenuator's electronics does not require a power supply.
Resistive means that the power out of your amplifier is tamed by the presence of one or several
resistors on the signal path. The load impedance plays a huge role on the sound, and a resistive
attenuator will make the tone somewhat darker, with losses in the high and low frequencies.
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 means losses in character and fidelity, "muddy" sound and
other unwanted effects.
Another downside of passive resistive/reactive attenuator is the way the listening level is controlled,
usually by some stepped potentiometer, which does not allow for precise volume setting, and limits
you to a set of fixed attenuations.
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 conjunction of two
elements:
a reactive loadbox inherited from the critically acclaimed Torpedo Live series, followed by
an ultra-low-distorsion, wideband, 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, get rid of 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, you get 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 on the Torpedo Reload. This opens up a great many fun
possibilities of cabinet mixing.
4.4.2 Connection
Connecting the Reload as an attenuator is really quite simple, provided you observe the following:
Always match the value of the impedance on the Torpedo Reload (either 4, 8 or 16 Ohms) to
your amplifier's speaker-output impedance.
The Torpedo Reload will normally get warm during use, so you must not put it in a closed box or
obstruct the air vents.
You can connect one or two cabinets to the Torpedo Reload, or no cabinet at all if you want to
use the loadbox only (silent playing and recording).
The impedance of the cabinets you may plug to your amp is independent from the impedance
of that amplifier. You can very well use the 8-Ohm speaker output of your amp while having one
8-Ohm cabinet and another 16-Ohm cabinet plugged to the Torpedo Reload! Please refer to
"Possible post-attenuation speaker combinations", Part 7.2.3 for more information about
cabinet matching.
User's manuals - http://wiki.two-notes.com/
17/27 Torpedo Reload User's Manual