[928GTS]

I've been perplexed over the past few years with the trend in DAP's of moving away from tactile buttons for volume control to encoder based volume knobs. First off, given how these are supposed to be portable devices and meant to be carried in a pocket or some sort of carry bag or what have you, wouldn't the volume knob constantly be getting bumped? Sure, there could be a function where you could lock the playback buttons and volume knob but if that was the case then you would need to pull the DAP out of wherever you have it stored in order to change tracks or adjust the volume which is a hassle and partially defeats the purpose of owning something portable in the first place.

Secondly, in my personal experience in the electronic part world I've had a lot more issues with encoders than I have had with tactile buttons. Over the time contacts on the encoder wheel start to tarnish which cause issues with the encoder recognizing movement which, when the encoder is used in service as a volume control, can manifest itself in uneven volume adjustment, the requested volume adjustment not being recognized at all or sometimes the volume jumping up or down in level quite suddenly which can be rather alarming to say the least. Due to the nature of the way DAP's are constructed actually accessing the encoder to clean it is a very difficult task. Even once you gain access to the encoder you still need to partially disassemble it in order to gain access to the encoder contact wheel.

So, again, I'm confused. Why has there been such a proliferation of these encoder style volume control schemes across the board in the DAP world?

 

[MPCK1967]

I'd imagine it's because it's more precise which is ideal for people using especially sensitive IEMs or cans with a particularly powerful DAP