UPDATE:
Whoa, what a journey! My custom IR remote w volume knob is finally working!
To re-cap why it took this long:
I'm in Canada and the custom company that made this remote for me is in Poland (Adams Custom Audio).
We "designed this" over emails. I wanted my CJ tube preamp to be controlled, my Benchmark pre-amp, and as a bonus, volume control for my AVR, picture control for Blu-Ray and Apple TV.
I sent all the remote codes to Adams, they constructed the remote (based on their existing remote design) and programmed everything how I wanted it.
Then shipped it to me. Problem was when I received it, everything worked great...except it wouldn't control volume on my Benchmark. The problem is the way this remote is built it wasn't programmable by the customer. (Which is fair enough: they were simply taking one of their remotes designed to work with their integrated amplifiers and re-programming one to try to control entirely different equipment). So they arranged to ship the OmniArc remote back to Poland along with the Benchmark remote, to figure out the problem and get it working.
BUT...once it was shipped to Poland it got stuck in some sort of customs hell. It was stuck for, I believe, months! We couldn't get it released either to move it on to Adams or get it back to me.
Finally it was released and shipped back to me (turned out to be easier than getting it back in to Poland...bizarre!).
Ok so what now? They came up with an idea of my sending them the Benchmark remote only, and I would purchase a USB programmer, that goes between the remote and the programming computer. Like this:
View attachment 315797
The idea is Adams would get the codes reliably off the Benchmark remote, examine how that remote worked, and then send me new programming based on what they found. I would use the USB programmer to flash the new hex commands on to the remote.
A friend of the company who happened to be in Toronto picked up the Benchmark remote and brought it to Adams in Poland. They looked at the remote, and sent me new programming.
And...it works! it finally all works!
Whew!