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Does the volume coming into a DAC matter?

Help me out I can't quite wrap my brain around this one. I've got a number of DACs, some are in integrated amp components other stand alone. When hooked up to my laptop I noticed that with some, but not all of them, changing the volume on my laptop changes the signal strength. But, I thought we were just passing data over USB to the DAC to interpret and create an analog signal from. Therefore my assumption is that the volume is just another piece of data, and it's not actually changing the signal strength. So is there an optimal volume to set the inbound signal to a DAC? Or does it really not matter?
designtaylor

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designtaylor OP
48 posts
 
adurerca thanks! Very helpful. I will.also check out SQ+
designtaylor's avatar
designtaylor OP
48 posts
 
Thanks! That was my assumption. I'm also curious if there would be any performance difference as you move down the based on up steam volume choices. I guess the obvious consideration is that the less signal strength the eventually preamp or amp has to use the harder it works and the better the chance for noise. Like if my laptop is at half volume and the USB connected DAC respects that and passes lower signal onto the amp. 
designtaylor's avatar
designtaylor OP
48 posts
 
erik_squires That's really interesting. I tend to play audio from multiple sources (local FLAC files, Spotify, Chrome, etc.) so it sounds like I'm likely getting a signal that's already been monkeyed with by the OS (mac in my case). I'll need to look into that. 
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