On Fri, 2005-07-29 at 16:39 -0700, Yannzola wrote: > Of course, the trade off here involves dropped bits vs. the > potential signal loss introduced by the adding volume controls in the > signal path.
You lose a bit every 6dB of attenuation you ask for. You only get the theoretical 96dB signal to noise ratio at wide open. When you cut it by 30dB, you are talking about 11 bit signals. > 24bit digital volume control give me any headroom before modifying the > signal? I'm not sure what you mean here. 24 bit has no more headroom. The normal way to look at digital signals is that zero dbfs is the max. (dB full scale). Signals max out at 0 dBfs, and get smaller. > Or is the signal modified (re-aliased?) as soon as the digital > volume is no longer fixed at 40? I don't know what you mean by re-aliased. Standard practice would be to re-dither. Someone from SlimDev would have to comment on what their algorithm does. > Basically, I'm wondering which is better (less sonically degrading) > given the choice: adjusting the volume digitally or adding some sort of > analog volume control into the stream? I think the answer depends on too many things, like the algorithm used mentioned above. I bought my Classe years before I got my first SqueezeBox. If I was starting over, I would consider skipping the preamp completely and running the SqueezeBox directly into a pair of monoblocks. If you later decided that you needed a preamp, you can always add one. -- Pat http://www.pfarrell.com/music/slimserver/slimsoftware.html _______________________________________________ audiophiles mailing list [email protected] http://lists.slimdevices.com/lists/listinfo/audiophiles
