I've been wanting to play all the cool web radio stations I've been listening to at work (using just a $25 sony earphones hooked to the soundcard of a standard issue corporate Compaq PC) through my fancy 2-Ch stereo at home. After reading this thread & others like it, I went ahead purchased a M-Audio "Sonica" USB gadget. I hooked up my newly aquired Laptop to a "Supratek" tube preamp (+ Air-Tight ATM-2 tube power amp, Kharma 2.2 speakers).
Sure the setup works, in fact it cut out a lot of the line noise I'm used to hearing at work. But the overall sound quality is, well, actually I was quite embarrassed to have put my much loved 2-channel through this experiment. The sound is very dull and lifeless -- not for the a-goners I'm afraid. I'm sure if I had a separate good quality 24/192 DAC (such as a bel canto) it could have made all the difference. But as it is with Sonica's onboard 24/96 DAC, I was not very impressed... For now I'm going back to the earphones for web applications.
Sure the setup works, in fact it cut out a lot of the line noise I'm used to hearing at work. But the overall sound quality is, well, actually I was quite embarrassed to have put my much loved 2-channel through this experiment. The sound is very dull and lifeless -- not for the a-goners I'm afraid. I'm sure if I had a separate good quality 24/192 DAC (such as a bel canto) it could have made all the difference. But as it is with Sonica's onboard 24/96 DAC, I was not very impressed... For now I'm going back to the earphones for web applications.