USB vs Digital Out from Audigy 2 Sound Card

Thanks Ejliu, I'll check out the AV-710

If you want another PCI sound card option, you can use a $25 Chaintech AV-710. It's a very good sounding option. I just installed one according to the instruction posted on headfi.org. You might be surprised by how good it sounds.

It only has an optical digital output however.

Thanks to Edesilva & Ejliu for your responses. I'll certainly check out Headfi.org & the M-Audio products - thanks for the heads-up! My DAC is only a short distance from my PC so distance is not a problem.

Regards,Bob

The Edirol does too, apparently. The Head Fi guys seem to recommend M-Audio Transits or M-Audio Sonicas. Those don't work for me, however, b/c I've only got an RCA PCM input to my DAC.

According to some postings on Headfi.org, SB Audigy 2 card resample all 44.1 kHz signal everything to 48 kHz for internal processing and then output to 44.1 kHz again. This process will introduce non-exact digital out and is quite common amoung computer sound card.

You might want to do some research on bit perfect digital output on headfi.org.

I like my Edirol UA-1D--I run it into a Theta IIIA, and the set up works nicely for MP3s and WAVs. That said, if you already have a digital out, I don't know how much you gain. I did note, in the incarnations of my set up, that a long USB run to the UA-1D was much better sounding than long coax or optical runs from the UA-1D, which might be a consideration if your DAC is a long way from your computer.