old misconception and it would make no sense at all.

You do lose dynamic range and have increased THD as mix level is decreased, by 6 db every halving of volume. But even with 16bit audio this really won't make any noticable difference at normal volume control range, i.e you only begin to hear the distortion and whatnot at the very quietest of levels, and with modern 24bit outputs this is a non-issue altogether.

Digital audio quite often can't be controlled in such a way as well, many outputs will always operate at full volume and the volume knob on the hardware or a mixer is required to attenuate it.

Max power is the best audio signal, but obviously isn't always suitable. And digital volume level and quality aren't the same. As Tiido said, dynamic range is reduced but this is a different issue and applies to analog issue as well.

The purpose of using SPDIF is simply to bypass the DAC process and ensure quality output, with a bonus having the noise level reduced as well.

Thanks for the info guys!

@Spikey I can actually adjust the volume of the SPDIF output through my keyboard hot keys, but as @Tiido said, it probably won't affect the dynamic range in a noticeable way since I have the output format set to 24/96. I'll continue using the KB volume control then. 😀

65C02 wrote on 2024-03-04, 04:41:

Hey guys, This isn't a question about retro audio hardware, but I'm hoping you guys might know the answer. The other day I conn […]
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Hey guys,
This isn't a question about retro audio hardware, but I'm hoping you guys might know the answer.
The other day I connected a digital amp to my onboard audio's optical out. Is it recommended to run Windows volume at 100% all the time and adjust volume output using the amp's volume control? Windows 11's default volume for Digital Audio is 100% (default for analog is 67%). Is there a reason for that, or are they both just randomly picked numbers by MS?

When I was running analog audio, I used to adjust volume using my keyboard hotkeys which was really convenient. I can still do that with SPDIF, of course, but is the output quality of digital audio still theoretically reduced when running at less than 100% volume at OS level, or is that just an old misconception?

Realistically only the case with low sample bit depth. Mixing on the receiver does make sense if you're playing both PCM and Dolby/DTS audio.