I guess I don't have nearly the engineering background to understand how you attenuate digitally without losing information.
Seems more accurate to say "Since the bits that are lost are so far down as to be inaudible, no sonic degradation occurs" rather than "The digital volume control in component X doesn't loose bits".
Let's say you turn a digital volume control from dead flat silence to the very tiniest signal that can be heard. If a system "doesn't loose bits" then that teeny tiny signal would have to have every speck of information that would be present if there was no attenuation at all - Just seems like this is not possible.
Can anyone explain to me what is happening when a 16 bit redbook signal is played back on, let's say the 35 bit NAD player. Do the 16 bits get spread out over the now-available 35 bits?
-Mike
OK how the 35 bits can mean the device does not lose any information.
Say you start with the standard 16 bits. Now you zoom this up to 35 bits by adding a pile of zeros behind the bits with information;
So say 5555666655556666 is the instantaneous bit at the moment direct from the Cd as 16 bits of info..
The you add on a lot of zeros.
55556666555566660000000000000000000. (these extra zero are tinier and tinier levels of information way way below the lowest level of info on a CD)
Now we cut the volume a tiny bit
((but for this example it magically is an integral of the 35 bits)).
So the new volume cut is 05555666655556666000000000000000000
See no information bits are lost! but the volume is lower.As the computer chip can extrapolat down to the very least bit of the 35 bits.
So say the person cuts to volume much further to:
000000005555666655556666000000000 Still have perfect total information at a much lower volume.
Make sense?
Now in real life the numerical number probably will change, but the simple experssion here is the main idea. With the increase of smaller and smaller bits extending down way beyond the 'least significant bit' the least significant bit can now move well below what could otherwise be done, with no loss of info in the digital domain.
(now if you lower the volume enough the analog portion of the circuit may lose some information to below it's threshold, but that happens all the time anyway in all analog circuits.)
The magic of big numbers...