We already know men have higher rates of suicide on almost all countries across the world . This study gives some scientific data about mechanisms that feed this phenomena . Namely , two traits traditionally considered masculine were linked to mental health problems playboy behaviour or sexual promiscuity . In Finland where I live large portion of males who committed suicide never , even once , sought help for their mental health issues . <| sep |> Are you sure that pulling the left and right channels together on the AIN net is your intent ? Why not preserve them through the amplification ? Yes , the output of this circuit is going into a stereo amplifier , then the left and right channel speakers are going into different rooms which need independent volume control . I am considering breaking it out to another stage inline in a custom interconnect or at least switchable , so I could use the same PCB for stereo in the future though . nbsp Second , this is a volatile digital potentiometer meaning that you will need to reinitialize it on power up every time you use it , it won ' t store it ' s previous state which might be a behavior you want . At least in this case , this is desired . This board will be continuously powered anyway , but I much prefer the failsafe of low volume output on power up . Since it ' ll be powered by the device controlling it , I ' ll probably add something into the startup process to turn it down an extra notch to the fulloff state . nbsp Third is it ' s a potentiometer , if you try to drive something with the output it won ' t work , you need some opamp buffers . Replying chronologically , just a copy of my reply to toinaeraserAha ! Between this and DefNotKGB ' s comment I understand what that schematic in the datasheet is doing . From my research I gather this is mainly required for driving long cables and I could potentially do without it in this case the output of this circuit is going straight into an amp , currently have some 0 . 5 m cables but could go shorter . I ' ll take a further look into it though as I ' d prefer the flexibility , but if I can skip it without damaging anything might breadboard the prototype without I have all the current components because I needed to measure the RCA jack anyway the datasheet for that part was the worst I ' ve ever seen !