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DAC, WASAPI and Windows volume control

G

Gchancel

New Member
Hello everyone!

I recently bought an external DAC/Preamplifier, and I was using optical S/PDIF because I had a cable, and my soundcard has an optical output.

Then, I bought a nice USB cable to plug my DAC instead of the toslink, especially because the soundcard maximum sample rate is 96kHz with optical, and I have a lot of 192k recordings, which I couldn't play with my DAC.

The problem is, I use Foobar2000 with WASAPI exclusive mode, and with SPDIF windows volume control didn't have any effect, which is what I would expect for a bit perfect playback, but now with the USB, the volume control works even in exclusive mode. Is that normal? Am I still in bit perfect mode even if volume control works ?

The fact is, in the USB driver, I can access a little info window, telling me current sample rate, and in exclusive mode the sample rate displayed is the file I'm currently playing, so I presume I'm doing bit perfect playback, but I wanted your opinions to be sure, and a tip to disable completely volume control in Windows if possible. I searched a lot on the internet and I can't find someone in my situation.

Edit: I presume the Mixer is not bypassed if volume control works because modifying the volume would "break" the bit-perfect playback?

Thanks!
 
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Can you hear other sounds, ie try youtube in the browser, while Foobar is playing?

Is it the system volume control that has the effect or is it the one specific to the USB device?
 
gvl said:
Can you hear other sounds, ie try youtube in the browser, while Foobar is playing?

Is it the system volume control that has the effect or is it the one specific to the USB device?
Click to expand...

I can't hear any other sounds at all, I tried with youtube and many others things.

It's the global system volume control that has an effect, the one in taskbar and on my keyboard.
 
Is the DAC also set as the default audio device in the OS? If so try changing the default audio device to something else. DACs often have a built in digital volume control that you can operate over USB, and the OS slider sends that volume command to the DAC where the volume is attenuated, perhaps this is what happens here. The fact you can't hear other sounds indicates the exclusive mode is working.
 
gvl said:
Is the DAC also set as the default audio device in the OS? If so try changing the default audio device to something else. DACs often have a built in digital volume control that you can operate over USB, and the OS slider sends that volume command to the DAC where the volume is attenuated, perhaps this is what happens here. The fact you can't hear other sounds indicates the exclusive mode is working.
Click to expand...

Yes the DAC is set as the default audio device in control panel. Thanks for the suggestion that's not a bad idea! Oh nice I didn't know DAC could have such functions. Thank you very much for your answers! I really appreciate.
 
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