Add-on needed to control digital audio volume.

[blanka]

I have a nice amp with speakers, but it does not have a volume control. The audio interface I use is a Phonic Firefly, with Firewire connection for 192khz/24 bit DA conversion.

Using this interface disables OSX volume control.

So the total chain delivers totally loud music or silence, but no volume control.

I know purists may start saying that is the nature of digital sound, you are silly to want volume control, but Windows just offers it. It is just a matter of being customer friendly or just ignorant. I think Apple is ignorant in this case.

I'm looking for a tool to offer volume control on this Firewire Device. All topics I found suggest the use of Soundflower. On paper the tool does what I want, and it works as I want, but it is buggy as hell. After 3 minutes the audio stream locks op and you get the typical DTS/DD sound when you put the digital stream into a D/A converter without decoding it. You have to reset it by choosing a new buffer size. Which does not work if you need to do it every 3 minutes.

So does anyone have an alternative to Soundflower?

Now I run iTunes in Windows in Parallels to play my music... 😱

 

[Intell]

Why don't you just use iTunes' volume control instead of Mac OS X's?

 

[blanka]

It is too course.
If you put it on the next to silent/mute position, it already is pretty loud.
With Soundflower you can fine-tune it quite well.

And system sounds are quite annoying too at high volume (same problem with that slider, it is too rough).

 

[benwiggy]

What kind of amplifier doesn't have a volume knob?

From images of the Phonic Firefly, it seems to have a master volume control. Does that not work with digital input?