Digital Drive

another thought

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Leo loves music

In Reply to: RE: Dither doesn't add distortion posted by 13th Duke of Wymbourne on April 22, 2025 at 17:41:23

You might misunderstand me.

"Why you guys can't just use hardware volume control? Cost reduction? Every cent counts?"

you guys = chip design/manufacture company
Cost reduction = manufacture cost reduction
Every cent counts = manufacture every cent counts

Aren't you a director of IC design?

Follow Ups:

RE: another thought - flood2 21:06:34 04/25/25 (0)
What do you mean by "hardware volume control". Do you mean an analogue volume control or additional electronic hardware to do the volume control external to the DAC? Neither is likely to be as good as doing the volume control internal to a DAC that internally converts and processes the incoming data at full 32 bit resolution because extending the signal path and routing the data to another circuit can only increase the noise floor.

In the case of the Benchmark DAC and other DACs using the ESS DACs (I'm not sure about the AKM DACs but I believe they are the same), they can achieve a full range of volume adjustment because they are using the full capability of the 32bit DAC so the 16 bit or 24 bit word is converted to 32bit and processed at that word length, therefore the volume can be adjusted with full precision down to the limits of the DAC itself. An analogue volume control can only be better than the -135dB range of the ESS DAC if it has lower noise...which is highly unlikely.

So the answer to your question is that it depends on the DAC and overall system design. Your concerns apply to older DAC designs from the early 2010s such as Cambridge Audio DACs (DacMagic plus) which had an 8 bit (-48dB) range of volume adjustment before bit truncation on a 24 bit word. NAD had a -66dB range which was very usable for "typical" listening behaviour.
Regards Anthony

"Beauty is Truth, Truth Beauty.." Keats
RE: another thought - 13th Duke of Wymbourne 13:31:45 04/23/25 (0)
Hi Leo, I didn't intend to be offensive so apologies. I don't find your posts idiotic but I do find them idiosyncratic, which is not a bad thing. I am an engineer, and good engineering means better = doing the same job for less cost or doing a better job for the same cost. That is pretty much the opposite of audiophilia where better = more expense, more stuff, more boxes, 'special' components. Maybe digital volume control is a good example. When I bought my CD player, a long time ago, it had bespoke filtering and a digital volume control. Back then that was expensive to implement as it needed a special DSP chip and software. That made it an expensive product but was hailed as audiophile. Later other companies jumped on the bespoke filtering bandwagon to set themselves apart and justify high prices. These days multiple filter options and digital volume control are now integrated into DAC chips making the whole solution much, much cheaper. The solution is still as good but because the price is now low those products are looked down on. This is sad because a lot of effort and talent went into making those features affordable whereas, the technical bar for entry into high end audio is not as high as the prices. If you have access to a CNC machine then you can sell a product and how often do you see the first product spec line being how thick is the face plate?

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