Yes. I looked up the spec sheet and the TC9459F is pretty good. These are analog attenuators and still relied on because most AVRs and surround controllers have a pure analog mode. Since they are analog they are exposed to all of the failings of the analog domain such as frequency response, phase shift, noise, nonlinear distortion, and spurious signals. In fact they can be made to perform quite well, just not quite as good as a middling high-performance audio op-amp. They may introduce some channel imbalance.
Its largest practical fault IMO is the step size. I prefer 0.5 dB steps.
However, we now see one advantage of digital controls. By reducing the required attenuation to one number, we need only put one attenuator into the signal chain, no matter how many different adjustment sources we wish to have.
The DSP manufacturers would prefer that the industry abandon these parts and rely on purely digital attenuation, but there appears to be a lack of will to move forward, as a (back up?) analog signal path is a feature that does not seem to want to die!
