Win7 volume control - good enough or still need preAmp?

[AndrewT]

Hi,
is there a way to put the volume attenuation in the powered speaker with a digital input?
That way keep all the bits until the final DAC does the job and then set the gain of the analogue amplifier to determine the SPL at the seat.

 

[tritosine]

You have to check the datasheet of the DAC chip, its not at all all -120, bits equal bits, perfect sound forever etc etc...

Those datasheet numbers also contain close to none jitter numbers, while a diyer is getting around 4x 10x 100x times worse jitter numbers directly affecting LSB-s.

If you have a plain dac without that extreme jitter precaution, or r2r dac, its best to use both. Digital for fine, resistor for coarse attenuation.

 

[Galgo]

Hi,
Thank you all for the discussion,
Please notice that currently I'm talking about the built-in sound codec of the mother board (ADI AD1986A) - which is pretty decent but defiantly not a "super resolution" DAC - in fact it's datasheet define 20bit at 96KHz (at double data rate which I'm not sure is always available).
I don't really hear any noticeable noise - which is surprising considering we are talking on analog circuits inside the PC.

I might upgrade to EXTERNAL DAC/Soundcard in the future but the question still remains

I'm sure the built in Win7 volume control won't satisfy Hi-End users with better DAC and signal sources who could invest more on Hi End components - either analog Potentiometer from the higher grade series, ladder attenuator or sophisticated LSR/electronic systems,
But I do believe the Win7 digital volume control algorithms have indeed improved to give decent results (nothing is perfect but we don't want to settle on complete garbage as well) - at least comparable to DIY installed basic analog Potentiometer on the audio path.