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68.23.172.3
I was wondering if anyone could help with this question...and I apologize if it has been discussed to death...But how important is the soundcard in the equation - in this case an external USB soundcard feeding a DAC via glass toslink then RCA out from the DAC to a pre amp. Would a better sound card be a benefit in this situation? Is the soundcard doing any processing of the signal itself or just passing it through on to the DAC?
Follow Ups:
The jitter in the signal from the soundcard to the DAC is critical. Usually these outputs are pretty poor, very slow risetimes or they are not matched to 75 ohms impedance or they cause ground-loop noise etc... Every one I have gotten for modding has needed fixing. I dont mod them anymore because the outboard USB or WiFi converters are much better.
the "sound card" is very important. I always recommend external "sound cards" like USB or FireWire to Audio adapters ... and you use of glass as the medium of transmission is a great one.Consider: the M-Audio Transit = USB to SPDIF coaxial and/or optical ... using the optical connection totally isolates your PC power supply from your audio equipment including your DAC.
http://www.m-audio.com/products/en_us/Transit-main.html ( with RF filtered USB cable: http://3dotaudio.com/maudio/transit.html )
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mercinary announcement: that's my web site: http://3dotaudio.com/maudio/transit.html
When you use an external USB DAC, your internal soundcard is left completely out of the chain as your usb dac has become your audio device. it is the soundcard now. if you're on windows, windows interal mixer (part of the OS SOFTWARE) keeps doing processing so you can play from different apps, etc. but the soundcrad is out.
admin - audioreview.com
... but the PC sound card may not have the optical connection, just the coaxial type ... in which case the PC sound card direct connect to the DAC may not be the best solution (mostly because of the PC power supply noise getting passed through to the DAC).
What I am running is a USB out to an external soundcard then from the soundcard to a DAC via toslink...rather than a straight USB from computer to a USB DAC.And what I am trying to figure out is how big a role that soundcard plays in the sound quality...is it doing anything more than passing info along to the DAC?
But the difference between them is not huge (although this depends on how well your DAC can deal with jitter, I suppose...a DAC that is sensitive to jitter may exhibit a huge difference when fed a signal containing little jitter).Even with my Lavry DA10 (which is said to be one of the best, if not the best, DACs as far as dealing with jitter goes) I can hear a difference between my old E-Mu 1212M's coax output, my old M-Audio Audiophile USB's coax output (slightly better than 1212M), and my new Empirical Audio Off-Ramp 2 Turbo's coax output (somewhat better than the Audiophile USB). The sound difference has more to do with clarity and detail than tone (I think the DAC, and of course speakers/headphones, play a much greater role in that department) or impact (for which the amp is the vital component).
I would say the USB device has a greater impact than power cable or interconnect, or even an output setting like ASIO vs. DirectSound, but less of an impact than the other major devices in the audio chain (DAC, amp, speakers/headphones).
The answer to that is: it depends! How sensitive is the DAC to input jitter? The jitter on the S/PDIF interface can cause significant changes in sound for many DACs. A few are less sensitive so the jitter is less of an issue.The Jitter on the output of USB-> S/PDIF converters varies wildly, which means that the sound with many DACs will also vary wildly with which converter you use.
As a general rule anything which runs off the USB bus power is going to be worse than something that has its own power supply. And even then something with a linear supply rather than something with a switching supply is USUALLY better.
Many USB "soundcards" (designed for gaming and general PC computing, not "audiophile" products) do have various processing modes, but in almost all casses those can be turned off with the card's control pannel. As long as you have any such as "3d spatializer", equalizer, limiter etc turned off you should be fine for what the box does. If you are running under Windows the operating system can mess things up as well, THAT has been covered to death here, I'll let others talk to that, I use linux which doesn't have those problems.
John S.
For me, the answer is to relock out of the computer. use a digital only card, rel;ock, and fed into good dac.Sounds good to me this way. The major advantage of computer audio is 24/276.4/294k handling. No unmodded transport does this.
It is a waste to use the HD for 44.1k only.
Well, I have a Sound Blaster Audigy 2NX...which is an outboard sound card connected to PC via USB which then feeds a Bel Canto DAC 2 via toslink. The Bel Canto has two inputs (toslink and coax) and the coax slot is being taken up by the output from the CDP.And I know that the Creative products are on no ones short list by any means...
But it does have the benefit of being fed it's own power supply...albeit via a wall wart...which may or may not be a plus over the M Audio USB.
I do have all of the junky "effects" disabled. But am also stuck with Windows.
And the sound output with the DAC is leaps and bounds better than the Creative all by it's lonesome...
But I was just wondering if the card itself is contributing to the equation and feeling like I might be better served by something else...but am at a loss right now as to what that might be...
The benefit of having an external card is that it can be run closer to the pre and I don't have to have my box right up next to my other equipment or sharing the same circuit.
So...I guess I am looking at the Creative with a bit of suspicion and wondering if it would beneficial to replace it with something other...although what that other might be is an open question at the moment.
Yes, go for lynx or rme. The software for the latter is less quirky to install.
... John knows! ... he's the man ... I just wish he would recommend something specific.Yes, there are several very good external "sound cards" ... and they do vary widely in quality, power filtration as well as the jitter problem.
My preferences are noted = M-Audio Transit being my favorite as a recommendation for Windows systems. (For my own system, I have the cheapist computer available with built in digital optical audio = an Apple Mac-Mini with the LossLess optical audio port (now available on all modern Apple computers.)
Is this a good way to go, espcially with a DAC with good jitter rejection (I have a Benchmark)?
Thanks all!I will give the M Audio Transit a whirl and see if it improves things...
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