- Thread Starter
- #41
Did you use Audacity to open it? The decoder may have compatibility issue. Try Reaper or other software.
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For those who worry about quality of software volume control
- Thread starter bennetng
- Start date
As important as music listening is, many of us really require a reliable volume control for more than just that. I use my PC for listening to music, yes, but also games and so on. Knowing ways (or even safe values) to adjust the levels digitally can be very handy for those of us without DAC with analog volume, for example. I'm just trying to understand the science of this the best that I can.
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I did, and I suppose it worked. I didn't turn down volume in Audacity enough. Since you have to get down to less than 10%.
captain paranoia
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Now you're using software to check that some other software is doing the right thing...
;-)
(yes, I'm playing the audiophool's advocate...)
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Got a better idea? Know if any reason this gives a false result?
Trust your ears, they never do the wrong thing
Deltawave can give false negatives when it can’t find a good match between two waveforms due to excessive noise or, say, non-linear distortions.
But when it produces a very good null, the possibility of it being wrong is pretty much nil.
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- Thread Starter
- #48
Hi all,
I have an article about volume control published in Archimago's blog:
http://archimago.blogspot.com/2019/06/guest-post-why-we-should-use-software.html
I have an article about volume control published in Archimago's blog:
http://archimago.blogspot.com/2019/06/guest-post-why-we-should-use-software.html
I have been doing this for a very long time with Roon. Not once have I had uncontrolled volume excursions or been blasted with noise.
I'm using Topping D10 to drive my amp directly. D10 is connected to a small fanless PC running Volumio which unlike foobar doesn't use software volume control but controls volume using XU208 chip in D10 so the result is the same as you have ESS chip to control volume. I never experienced a case that volume gets raised to 100% accidentally as I have configured Volumio to set volume to 15 on startup and to allow UPnP controllers to increase volume only by a step of 1.
Oh, I didn't realize that the D10 had a volume chip in it. Anyone know how to configure Squeezelite to control this?
D10 doesn't have a dedicated volume control chip, but as most DAC chips can control volume so can most of the USB interface chips and XU208 (used in D10) can do it. Some players can access this feature, some can't. For the ones that can look at the player volume control settings for a feature called "hardware volume control" or something similar.
- Thread Starter
- #53
My article explained why using these kinds of volume chips are not completely distortion free in some cases, please read until the end.
http://archimago.blogspot.com/2019/06/guest-post-why-we-should-use-software.html
What XU208 does is it converts 16 bit to 32 bit and then provides 24 bit dithered output, so no miracle there. I read your article but I haven't really found part where you are explaining why and when distortion happens? Is it related to "high quality" loudness wars recordings?
- Thread Starter
- #55
What XU208 does is it converts 16 bit to 32 bit and then provides 24 bit dithered output, so no miracle there. I read your article but I haven't really found part where you are explaining why and when distortion happens? Is it related to "high quality" loudness wars recordings?
It is not how many bits or dithering, it is the format of bits (integer vs float)
I thought it goes without saying that ESS and XU208 use float when performing volume control calculations. The more interesting part is the distortion you've mentioned - can you please explain from where does it come from?
- Thread Starter
- #57
https://www.audiosciencereview.com/...y-of-software-volume-control.5922/post-172865
Try the files above. In this context it means your XU208. If it pass, then go ahead and use it.
Volume control on Volumio is not expressed in dB. Besides, I have checked the manufacturer documentation - volume control in XU208 works exactly the same as it is described in that ESS presentation you linked, so I am not at all worried about the quality of the digital volume control I am using.
What interests me is the distortion issue you mentioned, so can you please elaborate it?
- Thread Starter
- #59
Did the XU208 pass the test with those files? If passed, then it is safe to use, no further explanation needed.
I would need to measure with REW to attenuate precisely by 12dB and I can't do that right now, but as I said, it is not that what worries me.
It seems to me you're avoiding my question about distortion.
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