Help! Looking for a DAC with some unique ablities...

Thanks everyone for more good recommendations.

@oberoniaomnia  and @panzrwagn - great discussion, and this train of thought (is there any degridation due to digital volume control) is why when I was playing with the Blue dude settings I figured I needed to activate digital pass-through. Which in turn means volume couldn't be changed by the Node 2i. 

I've had plenty of discusssions with a good friend and fellow hifi enthusiast on the topic. Not that we came to much of a concrete conclusion.

Of course in the analog world companies take great efforts to make high quality attenuators - in fact Luxman makes a big deal of it with regards to my pre-amp. But just because it's a big deal in the analog world, I don't know if we can automatically say the same is for the digital world? i've no idea how that is done digitally. I would love to know more.

For myself, I think I've decided I'll find a quality DAC that I can afford to use instead of the Blue Dude dac. I think that will be a decent step forward for myself even if I do control the volume sent to it. Certainly I will be able to do easy side by side comparisons once I have a DAC. Including comparing the digital pass-through feature, and see how that effects things. 

E.

@panzrwagn factor 10. at 24 bit so ~16M steps, loud at level 10M, 10x less at level 1M.

The term "data" is not restricted to digital realm. A vinyl record contains data. Analog signal contains data/information. Whether volume control is carried out in digital or analog domain, it reduces the signal/data. Basic information theory.

Definition of resolution is the ability to transmit fine-scale information. So you could record the speaker and compare the recording to the original data stream. The difference in information content is the loss of resolution. With speakers being sonically the most variable component, variability = low fidelity (true to the source), it is clearly having the greatest effect on sound reproduction (except room maybe). As nothing good can be added, it can only loose information, and typically loss happens at the fine grained end, so loss of resolution. Really not rocket science.

Re noise floor, yes, correct mathematically, irrelevant on a practical normal listening level. You need to learn to figure out what is relevant, put things into perspective.

If your regular listening is at 85–90 dB, I pity your ears, or what's left of them.

@everhard Re using/bypassing digital/analog volume, you can easily check whether you can hear a difference by comparing the two volume controls. In a reasonable middle ground (say within 20–80% of digital volume), I would be surprised if you can hear anything.

In theory, you could even go from digital device with volume control straight to power amp (start at low volume) and check effect of preamp on sound. 

In theory, you could even go from digital device with volume control straight to power amp (start at low volume) and check effect of preamp on sound.

@oberoniaomnia One could, and I did. There was a difference. There was a massive difference actually. Folks who believe preamplifiers are obsolete and a DAC with a digital volume control is all that's needed are setting themselves up for disappointment.

AGD just came out with this DAC/Streamer  and Mike11 is giving a review 

https://youtu.be/-Pz2ymMFZxM?si=6hm910HkMAEiBKrc

@jrwaudio ya. R2R streamer/dac with analog pre, analog and spdif digital inputs, balanced and single ended outs, and sub outs. He says he has the exclusive on this $8K piece for $7.5K