Interesting suggestions by Stateradiofan. As someone who builds his own computers, I can second the thought that Corsair power supplies are among the best. They also tend to be remarkably quiet acoustically.
The Tascam US-144 looks like something which provides a lot of capabilities and features for its $135 cost (at B&H)). Would I be correct in assuming that you are using it as usb in and spdif out, and if so that it does that conversion purely in the digital domain, without a d/a and then a/d conversion?
Also, I'd imagine that a major benefit of going fanless, and also of underclocking the cpu, besides minimizing power draw, would be reduction of emi/rfi (electromagnetic/radio frequency interference) that might couple through the cabling (or the air) into the dac. Running without fans would increase the operating temperature of the cpu and other digital chips on the motherboard, which would tend to slow down their risetimes and falltimes (and propagation delays as well, perhaps making the underclocking necessary), which would reduce digital noise that could increase jitter and/or couple into analog circuits in the dac.
Regards,
-- Al
The Tascam US-144 looks like something which provides a lot of capabilities and features for its $135 cost (at B&H)). Would I be correct in assuming that you are using it as usb in and spdif out, and if so that it does that conversion purely in the digital domain, without a d/a and then a/d conversion?
Also, I'd imagine that a major benefit of going fanless, and also of underclocking the cpu, besides minimizing power draw, would be reduction of emi/rfi (electromagnetic/radio frequency interference) that might couple through the cabling (or the air) into the dac. Running without fans would increase the operating temperature of the cpu and other digital chips on the motherboard, which would tend to slow down their risetimes and falltimes (and propagation delays as well, perhaps making the underclocking necessary), which would reduce digital noise that could increase jitter and/or couple into analog circuits in the dac.
Regards,
-- Al