Then those devices are to blame. Disabling the volume control is common for all digital outputs, not just HDMI. There's an absolute scale for volume in the digi

Then those devices are to blame. Disabling the volume control is common for all digital outputs, not just HDMI. There's an absolute scale for volume in the digital domain, so there should be no vast disparity from different devices unless they're doing something dumb. Analog sources could vary in volume because they provided voltage across an analog input. When CD players came out, they had notoriously "hot" outputs, meaning physically higher voltage. Not so with digital connections.