Max volume setting on Naim App with Uniti Nova

I have always thought that the "Max volume" setting is simply that.

You cannot turn up the volume beyond "x%" (whatever value you enter as x) - useful to ensure you don't accidentally blast away and overdrive your speakers at a party for example.
Or just to ensure you don't annoy your family or neighbours.
Also useful in a multiroom setting, where you can't hear the volume level in a remote room; good in preventing overdriving.

I do not believe it alters the volume at lower levels or across the spectrum, just the maximum achievable setting.

I have a Nova, and previously a Star before it, I use the volume limit set at 50.

The change affects the hole range of volume from 0-100, so if you set the max at 50 like me, you have half the volume across the 0-100 range.

So listening at 50 out of 100 with a 50 volume limit is the same as listening at 25 out of 100 with a 100 volume limit.

I'll try it on my Atom when I'm next with it...

Yes, it’s the same on the Atom, I also set it to 50 it allows for finer adjustment of volume...

Anavrin posted:

I have a Nova, and previously a Star before it, I use the volume limit set at 50.

The change affects the hole range of volume from 0-100, so if you set the max at 50 like me, you have half the volume across the 0-100 range.

So listening at 50 out of 100 with a 50 volume limit is the same as listening at 25 out of 100 with a 100 volume limit.

Exactly the same use for me.

Considering the Nova as two different methods for volume control (digital attenuation and then analog pot), how this setting will affect the use for them and the overall sound ?

On the other side, is it possible to use only the analogue pot instead of digital attenuation or optimise the output gain ?

Putting aside questions over maximum level and size of step, are you sure there are two (linked) volume adjusters ?

Digital to 30, then analogue via potentiometer seems odd. What happens at the transition, especially if you change the max. volume ?  I'd expect to hear that transition as an uneven step, or hear some other effect. I'd also expect to feel the handover when turning the knob - I don't.  Most volume controls with a pot on them have a hard end stop, but the Nova hasn't - it just spins on as you turn it suggesting digital only unless there's some kind of clutch which engages and releases the knob from the pot. Or are you saying there's a motorised pot internally that's driven round by a stepper motor once "30" (which is only an arbitrary level as you point out) is reached. That would seem vastly over-engineered if it is the case and I can't see a point for it to be that way.

I don't hold with "better sq"  from a pot as a reason  either, why would you want the sq to change at an arbitrary level as the volume control is passed from one method to another - surely you'd want consistency (and you wouldn't want it sounding worse as you reduce the volume). Also wouldn't the image shift at the lower end of the pot travel as it tends to do in purely analogue devices due to manufacturing tolerances  between the tracks ?

I'm happy to be wrong, but it does sound like an over-complicated, un-necessary faff to me.

I believe the volume control is totally digital, there is no pot.

As I have read, Volume control is still analog. There is no manual pot on the Nova but the control wheel is a remote for the pot inside the Nova.

An Naim expert can confirm ?

As an Electrical/Electronic Engineer I can comfortably say there’s no pot inside, to turn a pot remotely you would need some kind of servo in there to physically turn it, there’s little point in having a digital control curcuit controlling a servo needed to turn a pot, it’s just unessesary and a backwards way of doing things.

It will have a simple DAC inside, whereby a digital signal from the microprocessor is converted into the analogue the voltage required to control the gain of the amplifiers.

This way there are no moving parts to worry about introducing noise into the circuit or wearing out.

I’m sorry to say that I’m not an electronic engineer, but I do have a basic food hygiene certificate and a PhD in zoology. I also know that the Nova has a digitally controlled analogue volume control. This amazing fact can be found on the Naim website. 

Analogue volume control just means it changes the volume in the analogue domain rather than the digital domain, after the DAC rather than before it, if you prefer to look at it that way. 

There won’t be a pot in there in the sense of a conventional volume control pot. The volume limit that you can adjust in the app won’t be a digital domain adjustment. That would be absurd. It is just a means of limiting how far the analogue domain volume control can be turned up. This is all potentially trivial electronics. What Naim have done is make a very nice and non-trivial implementation where the channels are well matched, the increments are precise and repeatable, and the digital control is nicely smooth and weighted so that it’s a pleasure to use. The 272 and Nova are essentially the same in this regard, except that one has a knob on the front and the other has it on the top!

Best

David

David, if the limit simply means the volume control cannot be turned up so far, which is what I always thought it did, how does limiting the volume to say 50 give a finer control, so that it gets louder more slowly, as others have reported here?

HH I don’t think it does give finer control at all, but what it gives you is that you need a higher angular rotation to get one increment of volume. So it’s an illusion.

best

David