Volume from digital sources

[terrybooth]

Digital volume control does seem to mess music up. I avoid it - Raspberry Pi Dac cards which don't have the feature or, if they have the feature, turn it off. JRiver I haven't used for serious listening for some time now but I know I used asio output and I bypassed all the processing on the soundcard and I think I ended up bypassing the volume as well.

[terrybooth]

Good free music players for Windows include:
Apollo 37zz - simple, excellent quality audio (my favourite).
JetAudio Basic - good all-round media player
VLC - good simple video player, does music as well.

Foobar2000?

[Fretless]

Yes Foobar, very powerful and flexible with loads of add-on components. Can be a pain to set up though, for the less-experienced user.

Also terrific SQ.

[_D_S_J_R_]

I use Foobar and just needed to set the volume levelling feature off - couldn't hear a bloody difference but it makes me feel better

[_D_S_J_R_]

Digital volume control does seem to mess music up. I avoid it - Raspberry Pi Dac cards which don't have the feature or, if they have the feature, turn it off. JRiver I haven't used for serious listening for some time now but I know I used asio output and I bypassed all the processing on the soundcard and I think I ended up bypassing the volume as well.

I go with the Doc here - Raspberry Pi is a bit of a dead end, when you can take the output of a tablet or laptop and feed it into a pukka external DAC, even the ancient twin-supply QED I bought for initially a giggle - adding the second supply soon wiped the smug grin from my face!

[Dr Bunsen Honeydew]

The little QED Digit is highly underated if properly PSU'ed.

[Dr Bunsen Honeydew]

I seriously can't believe the quality coming off my laptop, it is better than the TFS, but most of that is because DAC I am using is miles better than the one in the TFS. A TFS run into my DAC maybe would be better again.

[_D_S_J_R_]

As long as the digital stream is clean for the Sony to deal with - and it obviously is - I wouldn't think about it again...

My Digit Opto has a Positron supply on the main unit and a Caiman supply for the audio output (with a Squeezebox add-on filter from Mark Grant which did help a little). Positrons now go used with Digits and are fetching stupid money now, considering some supply cheap and nasty caps inside the Positron need replacing (mine were leaking)