[Grateful Ed]

On Audirvana the decibels are different between these two DACs. The HRT goes all the way down to 60 something decibels, while the dragonfly only goes down to 30 something. The volume levels are similar and both DACs contain variable output 63 or 64 step volume control, so I'm wondering why there are different decibel numbers associated with these two DACs. For example, volume at exactly 50% on Audirvana is roughly 11 decibels for the microstreamer and roughly 6 or 7 for the dragonfly. Why is this? I thought a decibel was an exact measurement in volume and shouldn't change from device to device?
 
Thanks for any clarification,
Ed

 

[Grateful Ed]

Actually after a little more listening I noticed the Dragonfly can get considerably louder than the microstreamer. But I still don't understand the difference between the Dragonfly's lowest volume being 30ish decibels and the microstreamer's lowest volume being 60ish decibels.

 

[stv014]

A simple explanation is that the volume control in the HRT attenuates in 1 dB steps, and the one in the DragonFly in 0.5 dB steps. But it is also possible that the volume controls do not actually have a logarithmic scale.