I’m currently trying to get my Pi4 to be a roon endpoint and also support airplay as input.
Along the Pi4 i have the HiFiberry Digi+ Pro ADC (HAT) installed on the raspberry pi.
I was curious what’s the difference between ‘Software’ volume control option and ‘None’ ?
“none” means no volume control. This is basically what you use if you have a DAC and AMP after the Raspberry Pi.
That leaves volume control if you have the Pi act like DAC and/or AMP.
‘Software’ means that the software will increase/decrease the volume by changing the signal (digitally). ‘Hardware’ means that the DAC/AMP is capable of doing this in hardware (mostly analog).
General rule of thumb: hardware volume control is better than software volume control.