[Snoodge]

When you have a sound card that offers SPDIF or Optical digital output, why would there be a volume control available for that output?

Im wanting to send the output of my AV-710 to my Denon 3801 receiver just as if I was sending it from a CD transport or DVD player. Is there any way to disable the inherent volume control for the sound card so that it will just send the signal with no volume control at a fixed level like a CD/DVD transport would send?

 

[drminky]

Yep, normally you just leave the volume on 100%. In the digital world, this is normally the passive setting. Sometimes, (like on analogue mixing desks) the passive level is 75% and anything above that is actually amplifying the signal (which you don't want to do). But on a soundcard such as this I'm almost certain it will be the 100% volume.

The great thing about having the vol control is, if for some reason the signal is too hot and clips at the preamp, you can use that volume setting to easily (and cheaply) correct the problem. Usually (but dependening on their implementation) these digital vol controls are relatively transparent in the 80-100% range (but get progressively worse if you take them lower than that).

enjoy!

 

[Latexxx]

If you want to have bit-perfect output for cds, set your card to regular 2-channel mode (not hi-res), use foobar + kernel streaming (44.1 kHz/16 or 24 bit padded to 32), and set all volume controls to 100%.(see http://www.hydrogenaudio.org/forums/...dpost&p=257584)