Digital gain vs analog gain

@apogeum 

As a legislator once said on the house of the Texas legislature,

"I can explain it to ya, but I can't understand it for ya."

Apple Lossless is an interesting direction…although when I read their FAQ, they seemed to note that their format works via Bluetooth, but the benefits are not applicable?

If your power amp has input level controls, as some vintage Crown amps did, I would suggest attenuating them to allow your analog preamp volume control to operate with normal listening at the noon mark or a bit above, and your DAC or source unattenuated (-0dB).  That way you avoid the loss of resolution from the source, and the nasties that most VC pots exhibit near full attenuation…at least try that and judge for yourself.

Boom!

@hilde45 

Yup, that's the reality.  One could almost say that the quality degradation of the audio signal from recording to reproduction at home is equal to the ignored information about the causes for this degradation. Something could be done because in the end it's all about gain. Using active speakers and  intelligent volume control would be the easiest way to approach this problem at the consumer level.