Hi all...Iam am afraid it is an old chestnut, but at least with a twist. I need to get from my PC laptop to my new D/A converter, which is a MBL 1511F....Problem is the choice is massive and most of the cards i have seen written about, do alot more than i need, as i want it just for leistening to music not mixing etc.

A friend said that as i had digital output on my laptop i could use that, however that requires me to buy a docking station, and then that will only give me something pretty basic. (By the way, my friend has a mac and can put an optical cable directly into the headphone socket...and it works just like that!)....and i figure, i do not need a docking station, just an interface, so why not spend the money on the best interface.

So the question is ...USB or PCMCIA or firewire ( iLink), and does it make much of a difference for listening only?

Sean

You don't need a high end sound card, all you need is something that passes a digital out. try http://www.m-audio.com/products/en_us/Transit.html

Thanks for the advice...I have just taken a look on line but can't find any reviews on it...If it the sound is good then it is a bargain!..I noticed that it was 96 khz yet others were 192 khz. I am presumimg that 192 Khz is better ...do you have any suggestiopns for that?

Thanks again
Sean

Um since most of your source material is likely to be 16 bit 44.1KHz (if it is sourced from CD) then it doesn't matter one jot if the interface is capable of doing high bit rates or sampling frequencies at all.

And, unless you are making measurements that require higher sample rates (i.e. for something other than music) the assumption that 192kHz offers anything of value is quite weak.

Thanks for the advice all....I will be converting most of my cd collection to lossless ( flac using monkey media), and so i will be using the card to listen to cd's on the laptop drive and flac files on my hard drive using monkey media player....Unless of course you guys advise differently!

Thanks Sean

The only downside of the Transit is that it is a stereo-card capable of decoding surround-information - it does not truely support 5.1 channels, just decoding from stereo sources. If you dont need true 5.1 channels, then this is of course irrelevant.

I think most sound cards with a digital out (SPDIF) delivers bit perfect output.
They might differ in the amount of jitter they produce.
If this will be audible also depends on the ability of the DAC to reject input jitter.

http://www.thewelltemperedcomputer.com/KB/SPDIF.html

Nopes - the vast majority of the drivers process the sound in some way or the other. That's one incentive why I wrote my driver. Also, there's hardware for bitperfect output available for less than US$ 25.

For the purposes of this thread and external USB and Firewire devices I suspect the claim that most things with a digital output are bit perfect is true. As long everything is at unity gain and there is no mixing going on. Obviously the internal sound cards you wrote your drivers for are an utterly different ballgame, and don't get me started on AC97 codecs and Intel "HD" audio...

I'd like to seem some measurements on exactly what jitter adaptively clocked USB devices which are generating their audio clock from the USB via a PLL introduce. Obviously if you are willing to accept latency you can get rid of the jitter with buffers and high quality clocks on the input to the DA.

The whole question of jitter and clock sync is of vital importance when dealing with multiple digital devices and mixing for professional purposes. For point to point connections with single sources in a consumer setting you can put up with amounts of latency that would be utterly unacceptable in a professional environment so I don't see why bits of "high end" equipment don't just re-generate the timebase on input.

Wow...this is all getting a bit above my level!....Thanks all for the advice ...i have bought the Transit and will post the recults when it arrives.

Many thanks Again

Sean