The gain setting on the Stealth 8's is there to allow you to adjust the gain on each monitor individually if necessary.
(In most cases you're just going to leave them - which is why it's a screwdriver adjustment.)
The reason this can seem confusing is that the best answer to your question has changed over time.
In the old days there were several reasons why you might want to optimize the levels between your preamp and amp or speaker.
Most electronics in the old days had a relatively high noise floor - so you wanted to keep signal levels up high to avoid that.
Yet, at the same time, most equipment would have progressively higher levels of distortion at very high settings, especially near the top.
And ALL analog potentiometers, regardless of price, like the Volume control on a stereo preamp, mis-track somewhat at very low settings.
So, back then, you would have adjusted things like this:
- adjust your preamp so it was delivering the loudest signal it could before it started to distort
- now adjust the sensitivity of your amplifier (or the Stealth 8) so that it's playing at the highest level you would ever want it to
This combination would have given you the best noise and distortion performance and kept the controls in a range where they tracked well.
HOWEVER, most modern gear doesn't work this way any more, and there are new considerations to worry about.
Noise isn't usually a problem any more because most modern gear is actually pretty quiet.
And, with most modern gear, the distortion remains very low until you get up to the very top where they clip.
Modern analog potentiometers still don't track perfectly near the bottom....
But, if you use a digital volume control, then you lose resolution if you operate at too low a level (because bits go unused).
Stepped attenuators give you the best of both - at the expense of limiting you to steps rather than offering a continuous adjustment.
And, with the ladder attenuator made from separate resistors, one with fifty steps ends up being the diameter of a soda can, and costing quite a bit.
(The chip type ladder networks used in modern gear offer 128 or 256 internal steps - fit in a single IC chip - and are much more economical.)
The short answer is that, when used with most modern gear, unless you have a channel imbalance of some sort you need to adjust....
Just leave the gain settings on the Stealth 8's alone and don't worry about it.
(The Stealth 8's do have internal trims we set at the factory - so they should all be very close to the same when set to the same number...)
The Stealth 8 have a gain dial in back. Being a novice, I thought these adjustments were only for balancing both monitors due to room characteristics. Turns out gain is used to compensate the output voltage of the source/pre amp?
I'm running DC-1 into Stealths via XLR. Is it best to decrease gain on the monitors while increasing volume on the DC-1? Or vice versa? Does the DC-1 output better sound with higher volume?
Because both components are Emotiva, are they already mated perfectly as long as the monitors have equal gain settings? Is gain adjustment meant for non-Emo gear that has high or low output voltage?
