Just getting a 2nd hand ThinkPad (purcahse in progress) to switch to audio off the PC. I will be using "audiophile" amp & speakers (3 ways with ribbon tweeters, B&C mids, etc that I'll make myself).
I want to bypass the 3.5 mm analog output, as that will have gone through the basic onboard DAC.

I need either a USB 1.1 to SPDIF converter, to hook to a good separate 96k DAC, or a combined unit. Preferably a 2nd hand off board sound card with USB in and a 96k DAC.

I thought the M-Audio Audiophile USB might be the latter, but it looks like the USB is just for output, ie it's for musicians recording . . www.m-audio.com/products/en_us/AudiophileUSB-focus.html
The M-Audio Sonica Theater www.sudhian.com/index.php?/articles/show/465/2 was recommended here about 18 months for this purpose. It also has a USB port, but also seems to be for mixing and recording to the HD, rather than playing from it.

Can these USB ports be used for input??
Creative Lab’s Extigy USB?

If not, what is there now?

Or do I have to (last option) draw of something inside the notebook

Thanks

You might want to check out the products at empirical audio:

http://www.empiricalaudio.com/frComputer_Audio.html

They are higher end usb options designed to connect to outboard dacs.

I'm pretty interested in this: http://www.stereo-link.com
20 bit USB DAC with RCA inteconnects

A lower-end option that works quite nicely for me running a laptop w/foobar into a home stereo (adcom 5500 amp, with adcom preamp) is the stereo-link usb DAC. Simple but effective. I'm using the model 1400.

www.stereo-link.com

edit: oops, not sure about the 96k part of request.

In the usual nomenclature, input means in to the computer and output means out of the computer. This applies to a soundcard since it is for getting data into and out of a computer. The M-Audio USB Audiophile you mentioned does have outputs to deliver an audio signal to the outside world. Offhand, I don't recall reading about any soundcard that only has input. That would rather cripple anyone's efforts to create music, since it would leave them with no means to monitor their results.

The USB Audiophile claims 24/96. It probably doesn't operate in duplex mode at that resolution, and requires ASIO drivers, but you only want output anyway so you shouldn't care about that. Since your source is mp3, probably encoded from 44.1kHz originals, 96kHz playback is also technically meaningless to you, but we all know how emotions get in the way of reason.

Thanks for all the suggestions.

The Empirical Audio Off-Ramps may be great, but start at $600, at most I can afford about $200.
I've seen the Stereo-link. $179 is affordable, but with no statement about the spec or quality of the DAC, it might be ok, but if you're picky like me, its DACs are probaly not as good as those in the M-Audio gear.

AndyH-ha
> we all know how emotions get in the way of reason.
nyuk nyuk
> Since your source is mp3,
My source wasn't stated, but is lossless FLAC files.
The M-Audio USB Audiophile has RCA and S/PDIF inputs, their use USB was niot 100% clear to me.

Anyone heard of drawing off the digital signal inside a notebook or PC?
Factoring in time, it could be cheaper than buying the Hagerman USB DAC kit www.hagtech.com/hagusb.html and assembling it.

Cheers

The signal being fed into the DAC in the laptop would be a plain PCM stream, not a S/PDIF signal I think. So you'd need an additional chip to convert it to spdif, or else directly wire it to an external dac. I think the second option sounds really dubious...

You can find laptops with digital audio output these days, but that isn't a help to you if you're getting one second hand.

I have got just an ordinary MB from Asus that has an onboard sound device (Analog Devices HD 1986A) and it has 20-bit + 24bit DACs, with digital out capability. Why shell out $200, $600 for something that has perhaps even less?

analog qualities can seldom be measured in numbers.

Klyith
> The signal being fed into the DAC in the laptop would be a plain PCM stream
The laptop in will be FLAC files over a home network.


When replayed ~
A friend pointed out I had it wrong, USB is two way, so the laptop USB out could just go direct to the USB port in eg a M-Audio USB Audiophile.

(based on my limited experience, PC USB ports are two way, so maybe the M-Audio port is also two way)

I'm not sure what your confusion is about, so I don't know what you need to know. USB is indeed two way. The M-audio cards, like all other USB audio cards, can do both A to D and D to A. They convert analogue to digital and pass it into the computer for recording in any of many audio recording applications. They receive digital audio data from any of many computer audio playback applications, and convert it to analogue for any device that accepts line level analogue signals. There are USB DAC only devices, but they are not reasonably sold as soundcards, only as outboard DACs.

USB is indeed two way.

Thanks, my reading on M-audio cards etc looked to me it was just 'out' to the PC.

> There are USB DAC only devices, but they are not reasonably sold as soundcards, only as outboard DACs.

Apart from two from Hagerman, which are they?

Cheers

Hello,

Creative Xmod ?

http://www.digit-life.com/articles2/multim...ative-xmod.html


AiZ

If this is a question addressed to me, and if it is a request for a list of USB DACs on the market, I can't provide such a list. I see references to such devices from time to time. There are several "audiophile" equipment manufactures who have entered that market lately, and at least a couple of, apparently, one-product-only companies that have been around for awhile. A number of threads in this forum have been people asking about one or another such product. Not being interested, such information goes in one ear and out the other. I only remember that I have seen it.

Being picky with only $200? I totally relate, but let's be realistic. True audiophiles don't even talk about money
Stereo-link also shows a model that is $379 I think - again they don't give much details, only to say it has new power supply, and better capacitors. other web post note that PS Audio Digital Link III looks interesting but no one has auditioned one yet. oh but is $999. There is a discussion on Stereophile's forum regarding USB DAC. My impression is that JA thinks all USB DACs have jitter. He doesn't seem to think much of computer audio in general, but that's just my impression. I like empirical audios web site.

I'm almost done ripping my CDs to .flac, so I need to decide what I'll be using myself.

Terratec Phase 26 USB: 24 bit, 96 kHz DAC. Lowest price I have seen is around $220.

Go to www.digit-life.com and check their review of the E-MU 0404 USB. This is a very high-quality product for $200 USD.

EMU 0202 or EMU 0404 USB

Those E-MU cards may well be the best for the money even though the DACs aren't quite as good as other E-MU cards (same dacs as the 0404, not as good as the 1212m/1616m/1820m).

I went back an re-read Mike Chin's article on the Squeezebox 3. I respect his opinion from all of the stuff I've read from him on SPCR. Especially check out the postscript from Edward Ng/his father and that stereo setup. The Squeezebox plus the Benchmark DAC would be pretty damn nice.
http://www.silentpcreview.com/article287-page4.html

Now just more for me to ponder. And I'll need to upgrade my speakers. It never ends...

There are measures of analog quality.
However "24-bit" isn't one of them. That is a measure of the quality of the input, not the quality of the output.

Just as a sidenote, USB DACs are bad, bad... To my best knowledge they all transfer the data isochronously, not as USB protocol normally suggests. Isochronous data transfer prone to exactly the same jitter issues as SPDIF. I asked few engineers what is the problem to use normal USB capability to transfer data asynchronously, the answer was: there's no audio chipset on a market that does that, all existing stuff works isochronously.

As an opposite, network equipped audio devices, such as Squeezebox, naturally employ asynchronous transfer, eliminating data transfer as another source of jitter.

That's curious.

I think such sources of jitter are mainly nighttime bugbear under the bed, but if the DAC is properly buffered and re-timed, which should be SOP, all transmission jitter, no matter how bad, is gone.

...and to think, I thought you spoke English!






(That's a joke, and not intended to cause offense. For some reason I assumed AndyH-ha was from the UK, and spoke UK English. I'm used to seeing "new" (to me) phrases from American English speakers, or those from elsewhere, but this one surprised me. Where does it come from?)

Cheers,
David.

Straight forward reclocking is far-far away from eliminating audible jitter problems - I don't want to go into technical discussion, but you have all the Google to your service. And there were few very comprehensive explanation of the phenomenon on audioasylum.
The only DAC maker I'm aware of, who took it seriously enough is Dan Lavry, he implemented few different approaches in his DACs that supposed to handle different situations. And even he doesn't pretend for having jitter fully treated.
So it's still up to the "user" to decide whether he wants to put in a jittery source and hope that his DAC does some magic, or to take somewhat preventive approach.

In my copy of The Oxford Desk Dictionary I see, under bugbear "object of baseless fear." Most of us are familiar with the cultural mythology that has children always fearing some monster under the bed, necessitating a nightlight, or at least a parental inspection before the lights are doused. We know the fear is real, as are the differences an audiophile hears under uncontrolled conditions, its the "baseless" part that is significant here.

From whence does it come? I'm no better at plumbing the depths of the psyche than most other people, but new technology is demonstrating that the audiophile phenomena actually results is different signals reaching critical parts of the brain, based on expectation rather than actual physical input. No doubt there is some interesting historical tidbit in bugbear, but this desk dictionary doesn't address that.

Well, that was one elegant hint.

Can't speak for others, but for me "Jitter Matters!".
Frankly, as an engeneer (not audio though), I simply can't look at audio just by how it sounds to me at this particular moment. My system sounds rather different when I have a headache, when I'm angry, or when I'm in perfect listening mood, so I tend not to believe my ears, which I'd rather use to enjoy music, and not to evaluate systems. Brain does better for that. And when brain tells me that there might be a jitter, which I might be able to hear, might be not - I prefer to take care of that regardless if I can hear it NOW.
Another point is, I do enjoy technically correct design of the system I'm listening. It for sure doesn't do any harm to sound quality, it might treat things I can't hear - I don't care 'cause I enjoy knowing I don't let that %^$%$ jitter into the system.

I know it isn't kind to bait the audiophiles, but sometimes my mean streak gets the upper hand. I am, however, quite fond of finely done, technically correct devices, the more real improvements the better. While I make no claims about always, or even that often, knowing which is which, there is so much audio nonsense floating about that it can be very trying, and tiring, at times.

Jitter is certainly real, there is always jitter, but it is very hard to demonstrate that it is audibly significant at today's general technology level. ADC jitter is a permanent, non-improvable part of every digital recording, but with reasonable design, most, or most likely all, playback jitter can be reduced to that of the DAC itself.

And no, I don't actually know this from my own empirical observations. It is the conclusion of what reason I can bring to bear from readings on both sides of the debate.