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Does the volume coming into a DAC matter?

Help me out I can't quite wrap my brain around this one. I've got a number of DACs, some are in integrated amp components other stand alone. When hooked up to my laptop I noticed that with some, but not all of them, changing the volume on my laptop changes the signal strength. But, I thought we were just passing data over USB to the DAC to interpret and create an analog signal from. Therefore my assumption is that the volume is just another piece of data, and it's not actually changing the signal strength. So is there an optimal volume to set the inbound signal to a DAC? Or does it really not matter?
128x128designtaylor
designtaylor's avatar
designtaylor OP
48 posts
 
erik_squires That's really interesting. I tend to play audio from multiple sources (local FLAC files, Spotify, Chrome, etc.) so it sounds like I'm likely getting a signal that's already been monkeyed with by the OS (mac in my case). I'll need to look into that. 
adurerca
38 posts
 
I use Amarra SQ+ on my Macbook to stream Spotify to my Benchmark DAC3 with volume control. SQ+ is an audio driver and intercepts all music sources and streams bypassing the OSX core audio. This is how they recommend using it:

We would always recommend setting volume control at it's highest level for all apps and devices except for the last in the chain. Use that volume control to adjust listening level. This will make sure that each car in the train is delivering it's best signal to the next car in the train.

So I have SQ+ and Spotify at full gain and use the DAC3 for volume control.
designtaylor's avatar
designtaylor OP
48 posts
 
adurerca thanks! Very helpful. I will.also check out SQ+
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