Firmware update to Port to fix Variable output problem?

I think the wording could be sharpened up. It really means to only use passthrough if you control volume using an external amp with a third party control system (e.g. via Sonos). 

What basically happens is that the player outputs at Fixed 100%, and the amp/recvr -- which has previously registered somehow -- takes commands from the Sonos controller. Whether it’s done locally or via the cloud I’m unsure. 

Try this for info: 

The video describes how to set up things using the Connect in variable mode with the amp set to a predetermined volume level. Even though the pass through option is seen. I wonder why…

But based on what you are saying, if the pass through was selected here, the Sonos app would move the volume levels on the shown amp up and down via the slider in the app. 

I also have this question.  And not sure if I have understood the potential issues fully.

I want to use the digital out with an external DAC which has a manual volume control - remember those!?

If I understand everything here correctly, using it this way will NOT have any significant sonic degradation.  Would  that be fair to say?

Further, if I were to use the variable digital output, it is considered by most that I will suffer some loss in fidelity.  I will be using a high end DAC/AMP/Speakers.

What HiFi slammed the Port a year ago, but I have heard nothing widely reported elsewhere.  As often the case with What HiFi, they focused on the bad analogue output and then glossed over the digital output.

As the OP suggests, I would have expected this could be fixed with a firmware update.  

Ideally would use the variable digital output because while I can accept old school, doing volume from your seat is preferable.

Why not go for the ideal and not let your comfort be dictated by subjective opinions of others, almost none of which are supported by a controlled blind listening test? 

This business of bad analogue output in a What HiFi review is as much drivel as most of what they put out. So even the variable analogue output is just fine.

Your only problem with doing this though is that it will make your “high end” DAC redundant and save you footprint, cable clutter and electricity. Only you can decide if you can live with that. If you cannot, use the variable digital output via the DAC.

Well I’ll give it a go.  I’ve got the ports anyway.  

DACs are not all made equal though.  

And I’ll have monitor speakers with XLR so the port isn’t ideal.

Digital to Digital shouldn’t be that hard to get right.

Good luck, and I don't see that it should be difficult.

We will agree to disagree on the DACs subject in the sense that how they are made is not relevant. How they sound is. I had once a DAC with valves inside, that weighed about twice as much as my amp of that time, had the same footprint as the amp, and cost me about USD 1500. There was no difference in how music sounded with that in the set up and how it did when I deleted it and wired the analog out of my Sonos Connect to my amp, replacing the USD 1500 DAC with the one in the Connect.

Which you established by double blind testing, of course….

Of course not. It was however as careful a test as I could make at home because it had to do with the decision to be made to give the DAC away to a friend for free. 

And here’s the thing: if one can hear a difference in even a careful test, one needs a blind test to be sure that the difference is “real”. If pursuing that difference is going to mean a significant investment.

But if one does NOT hear the difference in such a test, it is extremely unlikely that one will start hearing it if one then improves testing rigour to blind/double blind. And also - what then is the motivation to make the test more rigorous? To search for a difference that also has not been reported anywhere where DACs are concerned under such testing conditions?

By the way, said friend still has the DAC in his set up, knows that it probably does not make a difference, but loves the way it looks and therefore still loves it to bits. So he is happy as well.

You seem to continually apply a double standard. If anyone else makes a subjective statement then you immediately fall back on the need for double blind testing for it to have any credibility, but you expect us to take your unsubstantiated comments based purely on your own aural memory (over what must be significant periods of time) as fact.

I don’t expect you to take as fact anything I say here 

This is the internet, everyone has to use their own filter to everything that is read on it. I do not claim any exemption from that filter either, and anyone that does not use their own developed filter to decide the merit of what I say is being just as gullible as some one that believes everything that, as one example, What HiFi puts out.