I've got a client who's been happily using his ZVBox 170 for five years and suddenly is asking about a problem. He says the volume on that TV channel is lower than the volume on the other channels in his system.

His "system" is an OTA antenna system that I designed and installed maybe a dozen years ago, and that I modified in small ways as needed as stations and TVs went to digital. So he's got the 170's QAM signal mixed in with the OTA ATSC signals, and reception works well on all TVs.

The volume on the QAM channel is so low that he has to turn the TV volume down before changing channels. This is irritating, and sometimes is forgotten in the middle of the night, the very moment when it's most important. This cannot be adjusted by AVR input trims, as only one room has an AVR. The other half dozen TVs in the house tune these channels directly. The solution has to be at the modulator.

The challenge is that the audio input to the 170 is digital (optical or coax) and I know of no digital equivalent of the little forty buck analog preamp I can just stick in line to boost the audio level. This seems like an interesting enough problem that others might like to know if a product exists that has digital in, digital out, volume control, and is also economical.

Thanks in advance for any suggestions!

What is the source that feeds into the ZeeVee? I ask because some units, cable/sat boxes have volume and decoding output adjustments built in, so do some DVD players. What's the source?

Other current ZeeVee boxes have analogue inputs. If you swap for that you could then use your usual analog amp that's already in your bag of tricks.

Sounds like you'll need a Digital to Analog box, volume box, finally an Analog to Digital.

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Not sure about the ZVBox 170 that you are dealing with. But I know on the Legacy cable boxes, if the remote was last programmed with the cable box. It'll make the buttons on the remote control the volume on the cable box itself. Of course this only worked when the settings in the menu were set to allow a variable volume change. If the ZVBox has that, just make sure that the volume in the menu is set to Fixed first.

I highly doubt that you'll find a box that would do a Digital to Analog to Digital with volume control built-in.

KOT

PS... I just found this. [Link: gefen.com]

Didn't want to delete my novel just because you might had some other ideas.

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Well duh, tweeterguy, of course! Thanks for asking. The source is a DirecTV receiver with component output. I was so focused on staying digital that I forgot I could take an analog output from the DirecTV, amplify it, and then convert to digital, as KOT suggests.

KOT, yes, that's the "kit" way to make this happen. I was just wondering if a simple device might do this all in the digital domain. After seeing a couple of schematics online, and thinking about it, that might be more difficult than actually converting, sticking a pot in line, then converting back!

KOT, thank you for not deleting your novel. I think everyone here gains from details being left in while we work through to the solution of a problem. Something that's not part of today's solution might inspire a different solution in six months.

I don't think the Gefen piece will work because we need about an 8 dB increase across the board all the time. Plus, the guy's an old studio hound and a musician. He would hear and hate having the dynamics messed with.

In that case before you get all creative with this have the client check the audio setting in the DTV and make sure Dolby Digital is set to Off and see how that affects the output to the TVs.