BowWow

Chris and James, thanks for your replies. Of course, one can NEVER be completely satisfied with one's setup, can one! *wink!* With no true audiophile shops within 250km I will give the Audio Advisor route a try. I'm watching the other developments and advice on this thread with great interest as well. Sadly, the bug has bitten... Steve

My setup is very similar to Jim's. I have a small Asus desktop with an ASUS Xonar DX card running JRiver, but I'm going analogue from the sound card straight to the Aux In on my (ancient) Harman/Kardon 730 receiver. We didn't have "digital in" in those days! I too am relatively new to the computer audiophile culture, and a very cheap barstead to boot! So I'm always looking for maximum bang for minimum buck. I'm willing to take a very minor hit in sound quality if it saves exponential money. Since I'm using the ASUS card's DAC, the only reason I could see for inserting an outboard DAC would be to improve/change/experiment with the sound. Coming back to the hi-fi world after a looooong hiatus I'm still of the mindset that the best system is an attenuated wire. In other words, the fewer "things" between the source and my ears the better. Is this philosophy still valid? I like the sound I'm getting with FLAC and the ASUS DX card. In fact, I'm astounded at the sound I'm getting! Would I be able to hear the difference with a USB DAC? I paid $80 for the sound card, and the specs are better than some more expensive usb DACs I've looked at. Playback at up to 24/192, SNR of 116dB, THD+N @1kHz (-3dB) at 0.00056%. Not bad, no? And if I ever want/need to I can swap the caps and opamps. So, would I be gaining anything aurally significant by going to an outboard DAC? Keep cost in the equation. It would have to sound radically better to justify the several hundred dollar jump over the $80 DX...

iPod Shuffle (2gb, 2nd gen) and Klipsch S4's. The whole setup fits in my shirt pocket!

Oh, I also have a beautiful wife, seven daughters, one son, five sons-in-law, and six grandkids. Life is, indeed, good!

In the summer I paint the lines on airport runways. In the winter I'm a safety advisor to oilfield construction companies. Interesting there are so few blue-collar folks in this place! I've been a bell hop, motorcycle mechanic, movie theater manager, teacher, Japanese-speaking tour guide in the Canadian Rockies, code cutter and systems analyst, administrator for a large multinational corporation, and a few other things tucked in between. Been into and out of hi-fi since I was 5 and my dad taught me how to work the record player. My first record was the Oklahoma! soundtrack, followed a few years later (age 8) when I received the Beach Boys first album. My music collection has grown and shrunk repeatedly over the years, and has included vinyl (both 33 1/3's and 45's), cassette, 8-track, open reel, cd, dvd, and downloaded music in various iterations. Found CA a year or so ago and am now experimenting in a more educated way with digital... Interests include philosophy, bicycling (both roadie and MTB), cars and motorcycles (currently building a 98 Mitsubishi Eclipse GTX and a 74 Yamaha XS650 cafe/tracker), I have a small collection of "frugal" guitars (I love screaming guitars!), dabble in R/C cars (most recently in crawlers), and rock 'n roll! Oh, I also like ice cream. All kinds of ice cream. Cheap no-name vanilla scooped into a ripe, juicy cantaloupe half or heaped on a slice of hot home-made apple pie is simply heaven! Pleased to meet all y'all!