[MGA1500]

When the volume slider is at the max, nothing will be done to the stream.

I guessed so; to make sure you understand what I am looking for please let me explain the thing I am after: while still using keyboard controls, OSD, json remotes etc with XBMC fully functional; the volume that the DAC reveives still needs to be 0dB while the volume that XBMC reports (through OSD etc) is send to our own application that controls the DACs further down the stream.

This way we keep full resolution through all processing and only (literally) a few centimeters before the speaker units apply volume control.

Initially I wanted to expand the USBDAC sourcecode with hardware volume control and send it over UART (part of USBDAC) to our system , but since I have looked at the AE code (using sink, detecting if sink supports colume control etc) I'd like to use the ALSA configuration options to tell AE that volume control is available, disable the volume controls to be processed by softvol, and introduce a dummy volume control that does not do anything with the volume.

Thas way, XBMC will think it is using a volume control while in reality nothing happens to the gain level.

Am I thinking too complex here? These are my first steps into ALSA so bear with me; -)

Thx!