The context here is simple volume control of a DAC generated audio signal with a potentiometer before an audio amplifier stage in a single supply, battery powered system.
Is there any advantage to attenuating only the AC component of a mid-supply biased audio signal, before buffering and feeding it into an AC coupled audio amplifier:
As opposed to attenuating both AC and DC components, before buffering and feeding it into the AC coupled audio amplifier:
Assuming the buffering op-amp is rail to rail, it seems that the two approaches should be theoretically equivalent.
The former approach seems like it might be more linear, avoiding the rails of the buffering op amp. The latter approach requires less parts, but there could be clipping near the rails due to non-idealities (albeit small) like input offset voltage in the buffering op-amp. Is one approach preferred over the other in practice?