milosz;446940 Wrote: > Does the SB VOLUME adjustment work by decimation of the stream being > played, or does it actually adjust gain in the analog domain? > > Obviously decimation (i.e. "digital volume control") would reduce the > audio quality as you lowered the volume. > > I can't find any thread that discusses volume control and decimation. > > Thanks
I think you are somewhat misusing the word "decimation" at least in the usual signal processing sense of the word. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Decimation_(signal_processing) However, we are understanding your post to mean loss of bit precision rather than loss of sample rate. There is no alternative to loss of bit precision when doing volume control in the digital domain with fixed precision DACs. I would argue that it doesn't matter as long as don't turn the digital gain way down, and then compensate by turning the following analog gain up high! My rule is that the volume of the entire chain should only be a shade higher than is comfortable to listen to when the digital volume is set to 100%. Then it is safe, to pull the volume down to an ideal listening level with the digital volume control and leave the analog volume control well alone. In slightly more technical language, I would argue that the quantization noise floor of the digital part of the signal chain will remain well below the thermal noise floor of your playback system as long as you don't crank the following amplifier gain to silly levels. This is, in part, what Mnyb is saying, if I understand his post well. Cheers. -- dsdreamer ---------------------- "Dreamer, easy in the chair that really fits you..." ------------------------------------------------------------------------ dsdreamer's Profile: http://forums.slimdevices.com/member.php?userid=12588 View this thread: http://forums.slimdevices.com/showthread.php?t=66479 _______________________________________________ discuss mailing list [email protected] http://lists.slimdevices.com/mailman/listinfo/discuss
