Hello. I am wondering if there is a workaround for low overall gain when an external DAC is being fed by an iPhone or Android device. When I feed my DAC with a PC, there is more than adequate gain, but when I feed my DAC with an iPhone or Android device, gain is much lower.and not sufficient. Any advice or input would be much appreciated.
For clarity, the output from the iphone is via Apple’s Lightning to USB Camera Adapter, and this output goes to one of three self powered DACs. The phone's output is digital, so its volume should be not limited, but it is.
Not sure about Android, but Google tells me iOS may automatically reduce volume levels, due to some inbuilt logic, possibly based on an assumption that most iOS use in-ear monitors.
Go to Settings > Screen Time > Content & Privacy Restrictions > Reduce Loud Sounds
If it's marked "Allow" then change it to "Don't Allow".
Then go to Settings > Sounds & Haptics > Headphone Safety > Reduce Loud Sounds
If turned on, change to off.
Go to Settings > Screen Time > Content & Privacy Restrictions > Reduce Loud Sounds
If it's marked "Allow" then change it to "Don't Allow".
Then go to Settings > Sounds & Haptics > Headphone Safety > Reduce Loud Sounds
If turned on, change to off.
This can also happen over bluetooth. In the car Spotify would limit the volume to about 40% unless you acknowledged a warning on the screen. Even after that any time you reconnected to the car bluetooth it would be at 40% volume and would beep at your when you raised it, first ignoring you and you had to press and hold it again to actually allow > 40% volume. The later I fixed with a "Tasker" event action (which also muted all notifications other than handfree stuff).
Recently I seen this had changed again and it's become an android system setting somewhere. I didn't get a chance to fix it as my car went in for repairs.
It's not just bluetooth either, but sound cards in PCs. They have anti-deafening ICs in them. No, really, there are ICs dedicated to managing the gain on the line outs. They even have multi-band limiters built in. It's to prevent accidentally blowing up someone's equipment or dumping a 1 watt 1Khz test tone through someones headphones.
If you have the official driver supported only in windows it will have the firmware to access the full volume output range of the chip/card. If you have the open source "generic" driver it will not have this proprietary firmware and thus the IC treats your own PC that it's soldered to as an "unknown" output and so will eable the nanny limiters in extreme state. The result is, for quite a few sound cards and motherboard onboard sound the output is significantly lower in Linux as it is in windows. The AC97 codec era and early HD-Audio and realtek chipsets suffered it to.
You can understand why they do it. Sony et. al. have paid out billions in damages for damage to hearing. Large companies just don't want those law suits whether valid or not. They don't want to damage someone's sensiative ADC or speakers, and they don't want dump users shorting internal opamps and cooking them.
It's just annoying. So annoying that I have turned to electronics and the ICs themselves to get around them if that makes sense.
Recently I seen this had changed again and it's become an android system setting somewhere. I didn't get a chance to fix it as my car went in for repairs.
It's not just bluetooth either, but sound cards in PCs. They have anti-deafening ICs in them. No, really, there are ICs dedicated to managing the gain on the line outs. They even have multi-band limiters built in. It's to prevent accidentally blowing up someone's equipment or dumping a 1 watt 1Khz test tone through someones headphones.
If you have the official driver supported only in windows it will have the firmware to access the full volume output range of the chip/card. If you have the open source "generic" driver it will not have this proprietary firmware and thus the IC treats your own PC that it's soldered to as an "unknown" output and so will eable the nanny limiters in extreme state. The result is, for quite a few sound cards and motherboard onboard sound the output is significantly lower in Linux as it is in windows. The AC97 codec era and early HD-Audio and realtek chipsets suffered it to.
You can understand why they do it. Sony et. al. have paid out billions in damages for damage to hearing. Large companies just don't want those law suits whether valid or not. They don't want to damage someone's sensiative ADC or speakers, and they don't want dump users shorting internal opamps and cooking them.
It's just annoying. So annoying that I have turned to electronics and the ICs themselves to get around them if that makes sense.
