Anolog/digitally controlled pot? Who gave the green light?

[McMasters]

--I just got my new replacement console with the better paint and upgraded monitor section. The 5.1 surround buzz is gone, but the taper on the monitor pots is strange and an annoyance.
--I calibrated my monitors as per spec, i.e. moderately loud at 2 o'clock, blasting at about 4 o'clock.
--The pot seems to be the smoothest between the 12 to 3 o'clock areas.
My question is as follows;
---Has the suspect taper on the pot always been there? i.e. on my old first run console. If so, I guess I got lucky during setup and hit the sweet spot right out of the box. Going from loud to absolute zero was much smoother on the old console.
--- I was told by tech support that you guys bumped the pot up 10db, so I just kicked my monitors down 10db, but that didn’t quite do it. I was clipping at 2 O’clock. So I backed my monitors down another 4 or 5db. That brought the sweet spot to about the 2 O’clock range.
---Now the weird thing is going from listening level to absolute zero. I found that it is not possible to do smoothly on my new console. Nor do I think it will ever be, judging from the responses on other threads.

---I read the other posts on this and digi's response is as follows;
<BLOCKQUOTE><font size="1" face="Verdana, Arial">quote:<HR>Information courtesy of Stan Cotey, product manager for control surfaces here at Digi:
Something users may notice is a funny "bump" in the taper of the monitor control. The monitor level control is accomplished electronically, so the actual rotary level control is really a shaft encoder as opposed to an analog pot. There are a finite number of steps (in this case I think it's 32) on the rotary control, which means there will be some compromise between how large the control range is and how large the individual steps are. The taper was specially designed by Focusrite to offer the best control range, given the fixed number of steps. However, there is a nearly 10dB "bump" in the level control down around the nine O'clock position on the control. This is normal and again, if the monitor system is set up properly (see below), should not be a problem.


-I suggest setting the monitor power amplifier gain (or powered monitor gain) so that reasonably loud (but not "blasting") monitor levels occur at around 2:00 on the monitor level control. This allows another 10dB of gain to check low level detail and reverb tails, etc. while providing a good working range of adjustment and it should be very quiet, noise-wise, as well.

Brent

<HR></BLOCKQUOTE>

---Stan Cotey
Administrator also stated;
<BLOCKQUOTE><font size="1" face="Verdana, Arial">quote:<HR>The primary advantage of this type of circuit is that the channel to channel levels are matched to within 0.1 dB at any position of the level control, which is obviously a step up from a multi-ganged analog control. <HR></BLOCKQUOTE>

This is the response that confused me.
I assume by channel to channel Stan means left, right, center etc.

---Digi seems to have tackled the stereo channel balance problem they had with the Pro Control, but in correcting this they introduced a stepped and jumpy monitor pot, with a narrow sweet spot. Can’t have your cake and eat it too. DAMN IT!
---32 steps of attenuation seems a bit small to me, but what do I know I just use this thing everyday.
---I can live with it, it is more of an annoyance then a problem.
---I hope when Digi puts out their next control surface, they fix these minor annoyances by maybe putting a couple prototypes in the hands of people that use them day in and day out for their livelihood. Which either they do not do, or they do and don’t listen to the testers input. The monitor section problem was the FIRST thing I noticed right out of the box on both my units. And I don’t really think I have Golden ears, they are more like a silver hue.

---Anyway, no serious complaints here, the C24 still is a great product, so long as I can get 4 years out of it.