Imagine sitting a comfortable distance from your 50" 1080HD TV screen. Imagine someone reduces the size of a picture from fullscreen to 1/128th the size - a 7 bit reduction of "digital volume" to a dithered 15x8 pixel image. Is the image noticeably more pixellated than with a fullscreen image?
If you pushed your nose against the screen or if you blow up the 15x8 pixel image to the full 50" you will notice the distortion on the smaller image. That's irrelevant to this discussion. On a 50" TV the size of the picture is now less than half an inch diagonally! If you stay at your comfortable distance from the screen the smaller image will not suffer because of the lack of pixels because it's too small for you to see! If there were a way to render 150x80 pixels into this same postage stamp of screen area would you notice the difference? (If so, I suggest that means you can see pixellation on a fullscreen image from your sitting position.) I think this is a pretty good analogy for how a digi volume control works. Either you can perceive distortion in a 16 bit signal (at full volume or low volume) or you can't. Reducing digital volume doesn't change whether or not you can perceive digital distortion. If you can't notice digital distortion at 100% volume you won't notice at reduced volume either. If you can hear digital distortion at low digital volumes you should be able to perceive it at 100% volume too - and that has nothing to do with digital volume control. The big assumption here is "comfortable distance from screen" which is the equivalent of setting up your analogue attenuation right. Not optional, absolutely essential. Darren -- darrenyeats http://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/richpub/listmania/byauthor/A3H57URKQB8AQO/ref=cm_pdp_content_listmania/203-7606506-5721503. (Inguz bass EQ'd) SB3 -> (pre bypassed) Krell KAV-300i -> PMC AB-1 (caps bass EQ'd) Desktop -> Genius Slab SW-flat2.1 700 Sennheiser HD 25-1 II ------------------------------------------------------------------------ darrenyeats's Profile: http://forums.slimdevices.com/member.php?userid=10799 View this thread: http://forums.slimdevices.com/showthread.php?t=77725 _______________________________________________ audiophiles mailing list [email protected] http://lists.slimdevices.com/mailman/listinfo/audiophiles
