I have never been happy using DACs to implement volume control. I guess largely because of the obvious degradation in resolution at low volume levels.

On my first DSP crossover I used an AD1939 CODEC, which has 24 bit resolution - though obviously lesser precision - and my approach here was to use a mix of steeped attenuator and digitally implemented volume control.

It worked well - though pretty shortly after I built an 8 channel PGA2320 based volume control.

For my new DSP crossover I started with a simple CS4398 in the DAC output. even when I built the first boards I KNEW I would be going back to integrate a programmable attenuator.

Why didn't I just start with it? **** knows.

At lease with the modular approach all I had to do was respin my DAC board to include a PGA2320 along with the CS4398. I already had SPI to the board, sop I can sneakily use these lines for the PGA 2320, as the CS4398 is in hard wired...