@carlsbad2 this is really more of a bass management issue than anything else. I suppose an AV receiver would solve this issue as long as it sounds as good as the end listener wants. Some people prefer to use their own DAC (for the speakers), which they would deem better sounding than the DAC in any AV receiver of similar affordability, but don’t want to use digital volume control (upstream of the DAC), so they want the analog output of the DAC (even if high-pass filtered at the digital level before the DAC) and the (analog) signal to the subwoofer to be volume synchronized when raising and lowering volume. The subwoofer itself has its own volume control to ensure they are set appropriately versus the speakers to begin with.
I’m sure you and many others would consider this a solved issue by simply, "settling," for either digital volume control upstream or using an AV receiver instead of proper high fidelity separate components (high-end DAC, pure power amplifiers etc.). I never said I expected this product to sell in the hundreds of thousands of units, but there are definitely niche uses for this. I posted this same idea to Reddit and someone else responded with, "Interesting. Like a stereo subwoofer pre-amp with L-R stereo attenuation. Could be very useful for people like me with no attenuation available on my power amplifiers, they are at 0db all the time. I’m currently using my pre-amp for volume / source selection but a little floor noise gets through when nothing is playing / quieter passages. This device could fit between my crossover and power amplifiers to allow attenuation at that point, but i’ve yet to find a device that covers this." And another person also suggested this device can be used in the process of comparing amplifiers. There are numerous potential uses for this device as I’ve outlined it.
-Ed
