This is going to be a bit of a curveball. My PC's and small stack go through a Teac AI-101DA. The key thing is it gives me choice and it's small. It drives a pair of old Castle bookshelf speakers or I can plug in my headphones. The input is ... main and audio PC's go in through optical input (Ditital Optical, not co-ax... I could potentially ditch one of them if I have to) The rest go in via USB (through a USB switch box) and also an analogue jack input (through its own DAC... which is not a bad DAC and perfectly acceptable when listening to zombies growling when playing games) via an external switch box. The unit suffers a chronic volume pot failure and there's no easy fix. I mean, ultimately I'd love to take the unit apart and get some spray in there. The feedback from Teac was that it wasn't actually the pot but something bonkers behind it instead. Obviously it was outside warantee when the fault appeared. Now... the remote control volume change works and is stable... however when I switch from audio feed to the works Team conference, I need to raise/lower the volume to a degree which is uncomfortable with the remote. So, I need a replacement for roughly £300 which is around the same size and at least one optical and one analogue input. There was talk about the Sprout 100 but it has a vinyl input which is not much good, and it's double my budget. I'm not looking for the unit to deliver sound which will blow me into next week; as long as it doesn't start humming and hissing that some are laying at the door of the SMSL AD18. As you can see from the picture, the Teac is nicely tucked away to the right of the red HDMI stream recorder, and there isn't much space left to put a more usual sized amp. It's just that it's a central piece to the set up... all the audio goes through it... so I can't take it out of the loop while I tinker. It's a lovely little unit, the DAC isn't bad, input and output choices are good... if it wasn't for this volume problem I would actually cry for this unit on the day it eventually dies. Grateful for any thoughts, advice and suggestions.
If the Teac meets all your requirements, why not buy another one, swap it out, and then try and repair this one? Does the volume control have infinite rotation. If so it is most likely some kind of shaft encoder as commonly used in car radios. Some of them can be quite crude. My other thought is that you could use some fancy remote control to send a macro into the unit, e.g. increase volume 10 steps. I have a Logitech harmony that can be programmed with Macros like that, although I have never tried. The reason for buying being to emulate a Sony DVD recorder service remote. Personally my most used boombox is the one I never see. I have a Sony twin cassette MegaBass boombox hidden behind my computer monitor which sits on a corner desk. It has a large volume control on the left which I can reach behind the volume and adjust. That has been my computer speakers for the last ten years.
I really love "surgical steel" styling of early TEAC knobs, to some extend preserved in AI-101A. So I wold follow @Longman suggestion: buy another TEAC (with an option for no-hassle return), then try and fix volume glitch. Compared to your AIWA bbox project this should be more fun!
I use a Asus Xonar Essence STX Card in the back of my desktop but it only has RCA Jacks. I run it to a small stack on my desk that I rotate every few months. I think they stopped making them but you should still be able to find it new. AudioKarma has some really long threads on different product, you might see some other really good options. Five years ago hardly anybody was modifing their outputs outside a soundcard, now there's a lot of cool stuff out there.
Getting another one wasn't easy, but I saw this at a reasonable price with a seller with a reasonable amount of good reputation, so I've taken a chance. And Jorge, it's all surgical steel to boot ... The volume problem was a well known one with these units apparently, which is why I do have a certain amount of trepidation with buying another one of the same unit. The volume control is not infinite loop. Strangely, you can turn the volume up with the knob, then turn it down with the remote, but if you nudge the knob again, the unit returns to the volume that the knob is set to. Occasionally that has caught me off guard. I do have a Panasonic bbox (RX-C45) which has line in and can drive speakers (sort-of) but I'd never considered using it behind the monitor. I'll have to think about that. Particularly possibly in conjunction with a rather neat little stereo jack switcher I found on e-bay which has a mute and variable resistor. Good thinking. I'll let you know how it all goes. Many thanks for the suggestions. I hope this is going to be £180 well spent.
OK - so the silver one is here and installed. I tracked down my conversation with Teac in 2019 and the correspondence actually happened with a German company called Aqipa. They referred me to Servicecare also potentially known at Sontec Electronics. Or maybe it was Sontec that referred me to Aqipa ... it all got very messy and I can't easily track who I was actually talking to at any particular point. So, I sent another correspondence to ServiceCare via their web site, and I'll wait to see what they come back with, before risking taking the old unit apart and giving the volume control some TLC.
