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Rega Aethos. Missed a trick?

R

Ronaudio

Ronaudio
What a great amplifier! Significant upgrade over the Rega Elicit-r. Wider soundstage. Better seperation of instruments. Extra detail. Unburstable power (in my room) and like hearing records anew, But...
marred by one thing. That remote volume control!!
The incremental steps are too big! Slight press upwards, and too loud, then downwards, and too quiet! necessitating getting up for manual intervention, and thereby negating the advantage of a remote! Wish they had spent more time before releasing the product testing these important ergonomics, and I’m not the first to comment on this flaw.
 
All the more baffling when you consider how good the remote volume control is on the Elicit-r.
 
Ron Ellis said:
Wish they had spent more time before releasing the product testing these important ergonomics, and I’m not the first to comment on this flaw.
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I guess Rega would call their ergonomics quirky? Maybe the factory is too close to France ;0)
 
Just an idea, if you have sky TV you can programme the handset to work with your amp. I use mine all the time on my Rotel amp as the Rotel handset has a multitude of buttons all in about 1/72 scale.

Cheers BB
 
Hi, you could try and find an old Rega Solar remote (the one that sold with Rega amps from 2000 up until the Elicit-R appeared). It allows for a much slower, much more precise control of the volume than with the current Solaris remote. At least that is the case with my own Elicit-R!
Hardly a thing you should have to do, but that is Rega for you.
 
Tiernoise said:
Hi, you could try and find an old Rega Solar remote (the one that sold with Rega amps from 2000 up until the Elicit-R appeared). It allows for a much slower, much more precise control of the volume than with the current Solaris remote. At least that is the case with my own Elicit-R!
Hardly a thing you should have to do, but that is Rega for you.
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Thanks for that advice. I actually have a solar remote from way back, and will give it a try tomorrow (too late tonight) Had a quick play with it, but it too seems to move the volume knob in jumps, but will be better able to assess tomorrow, and will post my findings.
And Mr Darwin, are there any fixes for the matter please? The one flaw on a brilliant product?
 
Same here. Amazing amp (fookin’ love it) but frustrating volume control on the remote. I tried the Solar remote but it jumps the same level as the stock Aethos.
 
That's interesting. Some of the keys on the ATC remote work quickly (like the mute button) but the volume controls are difficult to use in a fine tuned way
 
Although not a complete cure, use of attenuators might help here. I feed several sources into my Dynavector Preamp and it has a rather sensitive remote control. The sound from the television was the hardest to control so I have used attenuators on the TV output and the problem is solved. It gives me much greater control over the TV volume although there is one caveat, you need to turn the volume down before switching from the TV to anything else.
 
Woodface said:
It is the amp rather than the remote, I have a naim remote which also works the ATC, makes no difference.
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FYI, the Logitech Harmony universal remotes allow an individual device sensitivity to be set in the range 0 to 5 (default is 3).

For my ATC CDA2 Mk2 with the same problem as the OP reducing the sensitivity to 0 worked very well (and I had to do that for my Quad 99-CDP CD player too - so this does seem a fairly common problem). I did have to teach the Logitech handset commands from the ATC remote control as the CDA2 Mk2 was not in the Logitech database.

It is possible the Rega Aethos problem might also be amenable to this cure if it isn't too inconvenient for the OP.
 
John Phillips said:
FYI, the Logitech Harmony universal remotes allow an individual device sensitivity to be set in the range 0 to 5 (default is 3).

For my ATC CDA2 Mk2 with the same problem as the OP reducing the sensitivity to 0 worked very well (and I had to do that for my Quad 99-CDP CD player too - so this does seem a fairly common problem). I did have to teach the Logitech handset commands from the ATC remote control as the CDA2 Mk2 was not in the Logitech database.

It is possible the Rega Aethos problem might also be amenable to this cure if it isn't too inconvenient for the OP.
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That’s really good info. Both the ATC & naim remotes I have seem to go up in coarse increments whereas this doesn’t happen with my 252.
 
I'll admit I was somewhat taken aback when I read the initial post last night as having been sold for getting on for a year now and with thousands in use worldwide this is the first time I have personally heard of any issue with the remote operation.

Indeed the Aethos has been very favourably reviewed by numerous esteemed publications worldwide, is a multi award winner Internationally and none of the journalists have raised any concerns or observations.

I have now spoken with the design and service team at Rega HQ and they too have not heard of this either. Also from a personal perspective I am using an Aethos at home and have paired it with several different speakers Royd RR2, Naim SBL, Spica TC 50, Epos ES14, Kudos Titan 808 and latterly our new, yet to be released Kytes, and none of the combinations exhibited an issue with remote "sensitivity".

Could it therefore be that you are using a particularly sensitive loudspeaker which would effectively give you less absolute control over volume and would also explain the "unburstable power" (although conservatively rated at 125wpch, the Aethos is no slouch in that department)

And whilst it may not absolutely impossible to alter the operation of the amplifier I am told it would require significant modification to the microprocessor control and software.

PD
 
paul darwin said:
Indeed the Aethos has been very favourably reviewed by numerous esteemed publications worldwide, is a multi award winner Internationally and none of the journalists have raised any concerns or observations.
I have now spoken with the design and service team at Rega HQ and they too have not heard of this either.
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This is strange because even what hifi has addressed the same issue.

"Lastly, the volume control is rather enthusiastic when responding to commands from the remote, so it’s hard to make subtle volume adjustments."

https://www.whathifi.com/reviews/rega-aethos
 
Also from a personal perspective I am using an Aethos at home and have paired it with several different speakers Royd RR2, Naim SBL, Spica TC 50, Epos ES14, Kudos Titan 808 and latterly our new, yet to be released Kytes,


hi Paul
Please can I come round after lockdown !! :D
 
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