Lots of good thoughts. Let me try to sum it up one more time.
First of, the gain structure becomes more and more important, the more
stages of gain you have in your "system" (where "system" is not restricted to home Hi-Fi system). With a
single streamer feeding a
single amp it's simply less of an issue than, say, with a microphone, microphone pre-amp, multiple effects processors, a mixing console, a power amplifier and so on.
I'd say, the basic concepts behind a good gain structure are:
- Never let any device in the chain go into clipping.
- Don't amplify a signal just to have it attenuated in the next stage for no reason.
- Let your volume control work close to the range where it performs best.
The first point should be obvious. Clipping causes distortion. Once it's there, you cannot get rid of it further down the chain.
If you write down the second point the other way around, it remains true: Don't attenuate a signal so much that it needs additional amplification in the next stage. This is probably where this idea ...
... stems from. It's not entirely wrong, but maybe still a
bit of a misconception. You cannot feed a voltage higher than the input sensitivity into any device without violating rule 1. So, this ...
... is basically just a
slightly complicated way to ensure that the amp's input stage is not overloaded . We can probably agree on something like: Keep the signal level high, but not higher than natively supported by the next stage.
Finally, we
do need volume control, of course. Some disagree, but I stick to my statement that digital volume control (performed with 32 bit precision for 24 bit digital signals) is vastly superior to
most analogue potentiometers. To be on the safe side, both types should not be operated close to their minimum values. In particular, cheap analogue pots have the least negative influence in their max position.
Good hint. Also depends on the volume setting on the phone, of course.
Actually, it isn't. Sticking with the defaults is OK.
WiiM devices just give you a lot more control and potential for optimising than most other stuff sold at this price point.
