PC to DAC to PreAmp

Mmomnick,

I had a Creative Labs Audigy 2 Platnnium sound card in my machine breifly. While it was a slight improvement over the original Audigy, I was disappointed with its overall sound quality. I am very happy with my M-Audio sound board. I breifly hooked up an MSD link dac 3 using a miniplug to RCA cable (custom made high quality) and used an Aragon 24K as a Pre-amp. There was a very marginal improvement in sound but all those components were eating up a lot of desk space. As for using fiber cable (toslink) it has the highest jitter rate of all methods which results in data errors and smearing of the music. I would stick to the unbalanced (RCA) connection.

Thanks for the info Prpixel. I'll check out the M-Audio. As far as the jitter goes, does that not directly relate to the quality of the fiber being used, not to mention the source? I have a Monarcy DIP I planed on using, but the statement fiber cables = more jitter is new info to me. I personally am not looing to spend a lot here as I only use MP3s as a way of deciding which artists I want to buy on cd. I want a new sound card since I am a tweak addict (and am in the computer industry), and might as well simple run a wire to what I already own.

Thanks.

Matt

I use a setup very similar to the one you descibed in your opening post. M-AUDIO DIO 2496 to Theta DAC to Preamp. I'm very happy with the way it sounds.

I broke down and bought the Extigy, and am very happy with it's sound and also some of it's features. I can understand why one would say the Audigy 2 was only a slight improvement over the Audigy, but then again concider your going from 24/96 DACs to 24/192. Going from my Live card to the Extigy is a huge difference, and I like the ability to take the Exitgy on the road and get 5.1 sound from my laptop. Like most things, its good if it meets your needs...the Extigy certainly does for me.

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.