since i have good loudspeakers now (B&W 703) i don't want to listen to music at my pc anymore. but i want to combine the usability of the PC (foobar) and the quality of standalone sound equipment. i plan to connect my notebook via spdif output into a pre-amp that has an spdif input (like most of the dolby digital amps have one today). this one for example has lots of digital inputs: http://www.rotel-hifi.com/products/rsp1066.htm

in the end it will look like this:
eac ripped lossless music =>
foobar =>
kernel streaming =>
spdif out into spdif input at preamp =>
amp =>
b&w 703

how good is this solution compared to a standalone cd player ? (i'm not talking about the d/a converter in the preamp, i think of quality loss that is maybe caused by resampling in the pc or something like that)

thank you for your answers

It will depend on the resampling, if existing, of your notebook soundcard. If it does resample to 48 KHz, you could improve it using foobar SSRC.

can anybody recommend me a soundcard that does NOTHING with the sound. i just want the soundcard to give the PCM stream "as it is" to the external preamp. i don't even want it to do anything to the loudness. not much i require from a soundcard, really

Very interesting ... I have my PC (Terratec EWX2496) connected to my DAT Sony DTC790 with a 2x10m optical connection ... I recently did a full duplex loopback recording (playing back an existing wav on the hdd and recording it at the same time) ... guess what EAC wav compare says to original and recording: not a single sample differs ...

So much for HighEnd digital cable

Edit ... if your soundcard does internally resample to 48 kHz (even when not using the internal DAC but routing straight through SPDIF) with a lower-quality resampler (like many creative cards do) there is nothing you can do - except using a player with HQ upsampling support like foobar2000 (the ssrc resampler is known to be one of the best around) to circumvent sound controller resampling by directly feeding a 48 kHz stream.

As for an SPDIF connection ... as described above, I never had any problems, even with el-cheapo optical cable, you should be on par with most standalone CD players (assuming the DAC circuitry in your amp is well-designed).

It seems the Sonica Theather from M-Audio could do, for portables. However, I'm not sure this card has a spdif out.

Hmm ... there is a Tascam USB Sound device ... US-122 IIRC ... may be worth looking at, too ...

What you should do depends a bit on what your Rotel preamp does too.

I have a yamaha receiver that resamples to 48.To avoid resampling by my sound card and my amp, I use SSRC winamp plug-in. I see some of the newer stuff out there resamples to as high as 96.

I think a USB soundcard could be your best option.

You're in for a real treat though. Running spdif out to your "real" stereo gives you the best of all worlds IMHO.

probably the notebook will only be there for controling foobar that runs on another pc (remote desktop), so i can also use pci soundcards
how about this card

http://www.m-audio.net/index.php?do=produc...c1d7de8f4cc2c3e

This is not only dependant on the soundcard. Check this : http://www.hydrogenaudio.org/forums/index....showtopic=11725

It depends on the soundcard, the sound device used (Wave Out, DirectSound, Kernel Streaming or ASIO), and the OS (bit perfect is possible in Wave Out in Windows98, not in XP, exept with RME and Marian soundcards).

Another point, you assume that the DAC in a receiver will be better than the one in a soundcard, this is far from obvious.

My "bit-perfect" loopback test was carried out under WinXP ... I used Winamp 5.01 as a player (DS output, though) while recording with Soundforge 6.0 (IIRC, SF uses DirectSound as well) ...

i read the other thread...

what exactly is kmixer ?
i have a file under C:\WINDOWS\system32\drivers that is called kmixer.sys so i guess it has something to do with drivers but what does it do ?

edit: i also did a search for kmixer here on the forum and with google but i can only linux stuff and people who have problems with kmixer but no detailed information on it.

How do you ensure "bit perfect" under WinXP then?

Cheers,
David.
(vaguely thinking of upgrading)

Using DirectSound, ASIO or KernelStreaming shouldn't be a problem ... WaveOut is the problem if I got that right ...

But DirectSound isn't bit perfect under Win98 IIRC?

Hey pal ... please do not confuse me even more

iirc WaveOut is Win9x suitable while not for NT4+
DirecSound is suitable for NT4+ while not for Win9x

edit: Peter reminded me that DS on NT4 is a big no-no so exclude that.

...exept with Marian or RME soundcards, for which it is the opposite with Windows XP (Wave out OK, DirectSound broken)