Volumite for Buffalo II?

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it costs only 25 dollars, try it out. IMO its actually the perfect volume control, it has no effect on input or output impedance of anything and it acts upoon the dac registers far and above any area that is of interest to audio. the buffalo is 32 bit remember and we use at most 24, yes its digital and yes it reduces the dataset used to describe the music, but it has zero effect on the useable dynamic range. it is the same information set that is used for taps for EQ of multichannel audio etc AFAIK, I dont have access to the datasheet and nobody who does can tell you ;|
 
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oh its definitely worth a try, I should have mentioned that i've been using it on my 32S to great effect for quite a while now, waiting for the V2 version to arrive and i've been using basically the same technology in my small home recording setup for levels control for ages. any relatively modern or remastered music you listen to on your dac is likely to have been created using such systems
 
Digital volume control will negatively affect signal to noise ratio and PSRR. Having said that, I use something similar to the Volumite and I find it works very well. There are compromises for any approach, so just pick whatever works well in your system.
 
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but doesnt it use the bits not used for audio with the sabre chip? I suppose as I mentioned it is still using the info used to describe the information we DO listen to, so yeah like yo say penalty anywhere you go I guess, sure is audibly the best type i've used though
 
yes I know the audio isnt 32 bit, but I had assumed that the registers were using the bandwidth not used for audio. I think you misinterperated my post, I wasnt ever saying the audio was 32bit, but that the chip was and we only use at the most 24 for audio, leaving 8 bits to describe other functions. is that not whats going on? serious question. for instance in a graphics format; lets take a photoshop file. the actual colour information is stored most often in 24 bit for photograhic imagery, but the photoshop file format is 32 bit, the other 8 bits are used to describe layer information, masks etc without having any impact on the 24 bits used for the photo, I had assumed something similar was going on with the dac registers in a 32 bit audio chip only using ~24 for the actual audio stream.
 
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right, OK thanks, not sure if you saw the last analogy I added above and if it makes any sense to you. what do they say, a little information is a dangerous thing :D regardless the result is still my favored way of doing things and its a trade-off i'm willing to make given the circumstances. any other kind of pot will do the same thing but with different methods, generally with other complications not presented here; so i'm all good. wasnt so much thinking there was a free lunch involved, but more that I expected that since not all the bit depth of the chip was used for audio, that functions such as volume would be treated as 'system tasks' if that makes any sense. I do wonder why something like that isnt undertaken, given the bandwidth we have available in todays tech. anyway thanks again for clearing that up
 
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LOL, I just realized the flaw in my thinking (or have I); in audio, even if a completely separate chip of equal resolution were to multitask this volume control (as a sort of 'overlay'), SNR would still be effected in the same way is that right?, being that SNR is just a yardstick for what is a finite resource measured over time. sorry, probably some conceptual wrestling I should do in the privacy of my own home ;D.

apologies for all the analogies, trying to put it into language I understand and concepts i'm more familiar with
 
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I don't have the technical know how like many of you guys but this is how I understand it.
qusp is right that the 32bits used by the dac does give room for attenuation without loosning resolution/data, at least in the beginning. If used to attenuate a lot it will become more cumbersome.
So, designwise one should aim to match the amplification to your listening levels.
As long as the attenuation isn't big everything is fine.
SNR should be fine as well as long as the attenuation isn't too great.

Othoh, analog attenuation isn't perfect either...
 
Othoh, analog attenuation isn't perfect either...

It's usually actually usually much less perfect. :)

Just measure the results and see. Any analog loss(attenuation) will bring with it added distortion and noise of one sort or another. You also have issues like channel matching and non-linearity to deal with in some cases.

If the DAC has sufficient dynamic range such as the ES9018 it will be difficult at best to match with an analog attenuator.
 
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