gschuck

[quote name=Interfacing to an external DAC is a good idea' date=' however the implementation of the optical is at 192/24, but not 176.4. Hard pushed to find an optical input on a DAC higher than 96/24 these days? I thought there was a limit on the type of opto that couldn't go any higher..? .[/quote] It looks like the optical link is an input so the device can be used as a DAC.

First of all, I found this site a few weeks ago and have learned a ton. Thank you all! So, I'm upgrading from my 8 year old laptop running XP, a USB hard drive, and outputting via USB to a Musical Fidelity V-Dac (old model). I'd like to build a C.A.P.S 2.0 server minus the SOtM USB card (to be added in the future). This leaves me with two output choices. The first is USB to the DAC but the USB interface on the DAC is limited to 16/44.1k. The second is to make a cable to plug into the SPDIF header on the motherboard and have the ability to output 24/96k to the DAC, similar to what Chris did with his C.A.P.S. 1.0. My questions are: 1 - Has anyone made this cable and have advice on how to do it? 2 - Has anyone used the SPDIF header output and could comment on the sound quality? Thanks for the help.