DAC's with volume control question

in the digital realm volume levels can be attenuated but there will be a loss of bit-detail resolution if the attenuation is significant from full volume -- whether you can hear this clearly as compromising sound quality is another matter entirely, but there can indeed be a loss of info in the last few bits of the datastream at low volume levels

this having been said, there are dacs that do the attenuation post d/a conversion (metrum jade, ayre codex, sonnet morpheus are three outstanding dacs that do this) ... i.e. at the analog output stage... this is hard and expensive to do (the same reason why good preamps are often expensive, there is real skill, technical savvy and often expensive parts involved in implementing analog domain volume attentuation without hurting the purity of sound)

@levy03

to be honest with you, i don’t have a solid, confident answer for you on this subject

early last year, i had a RME ADI2 dac in house, it did have built-in digital volume control, but i did not use/test that aspect of it (now i regret not doing so)... i just ran it at full volume to hear its sound quality compared to other dacs i was trying, which i assume is how it would sound best... overall it is a good sounding, feature packed (if complex) unit, and many headphone users love the unit... i sold it as i felt it had a very nice clean clear crisp sound, not too lean, but head to head against the chord dacs it did not image nearly as well and the chords were a little more refined - i do remember reading in its (huge) owners manual that they painfully engineered its digital volume control to sound very good - maybe this one is worth your trying... maybe you just pick up one used (they appear on AG or USAM reasonably frequently) at a decent price to try (~$800) - easy to resell - i think at that price the sound is very good and the volume control could work for you

since that time, i moved on to some more expensive dacs, with built in remote volume in the analog domain and they are great, i did not try other lower cost ones

separately, i would mention that when it comes to digital volume attenuation, one needs to leave behind the paradigm of traditional volume control where the ’comfortable’ setting is around halfway or so... with digital you would ideally match the output of dac such that it runs much closer to full output when playing music at your usual listening levels (or at least 80-90%), for the reasons i described earlier

finally - this short video is the best i have seen explaining digital volume control and the considerations therein ... hans really knows what he is talking about and presents his thoughts in a mature, humble way
https://youtu.be/hni1ToR308o