alpine

Good point. Spotify's codec is Ogg Vorbis q9 @ 320kbps. That's the highest streaming music service available! And will sound even better by bypassing KMixer....

Hi All, I'm trying to get the PCM/Wave/I2S/whatever it is output from the Spotify player direct to my external DACs and bypassing KMixer for XP and the sound controls in 7. I'm trying to send bit perfect to my Valab NOS and 0404USB DACs. Has anyone else been able to do this? The nearest I have got is with ReClock, but for some reason ReClock does not intercept PCM from MCE (something to do with ehshell.exe) and it looks like not for Spotify either. I have both XP and 7. ReClock can Kernel Stream / WASAPI Exclusive the PCM straight to the DAC normally. Any advice on getting bit perfect with Spotify most appreciated!!

emw, It's an unmodified netbook. Therefore 1GB RAM and XP home. I wouldn't bother getting an eee SSD, way to slow, the HDD in the Aspire One are MUCH better for whole system responsiveness. I had to return my eee. I have both Media Center 13 and Jukebox 12. The latter is free and works just as well as MC13, but you get the amazon advertising on front page. Also, if you want to use a remote then you'll have to purchase MC13. I don't hear a difference between the 2 in my room.

emw, I might be able to help you here. I have recently gone the netbook - 0404 USB route. I picked up an 8.9" Acer Aspire One from Fry's for $257. After some investigation I can tell you a netbook is suitable for playing music to the 0404USB - but only just!! I have my music ripped to FLAC using dbPoweramp and saved to an external USB hard drive. On the netbook, I have tested both Foobar and JRiver and prefer JRiver simply because it remembers the ASIO driver settings for the 0404. The thing you need to look for is popping and clicking during playback. This was caused for me by latencies in other system drivers. I used the DPC latency checker tool to determine my wifi was causing huge latency issues: http://www.head-fi.org/forums/f46/pops-crackles-when-using-emu-0404-usb-301161/ So when you play back make sure you disable your wireless. LAN is ok, just not wireless. I have also found that a wired NAS still produces some pops. The only solution that works for me is to run the external USB drive directly into the netbook on a seperate USB bus on the opposing side. The sound is fantastic this way. Upsampling works, but only multiples of the native source - ie 44.1 to 96 the computer is not powerful enough. however 44.1 to 88.2 or 176.4 works also. Don't even try Secret Rabbit Code upsampling in Foobar, would stall right from the first second with the processor at 100%!! Native sources at 24bitx192khz work fine also (from the 2L studio the ones I have tried). I send my audio balanced out to an amp (Emotiva RSP2) using TRS to XLR cables from monoprice. Hope this helps, Adrian.

It looks like any other wall wart to me. Is it linear regulated? It's doesn't look like it...

Hi Steve N. Thanks for your explanation above about the differences in software players. I was not aware the 0404 is Asyncronous. This must be one of the few on the market today! Also, how does this DAC compare to the NOS types by Valab and Gigalab? Or, should I get both, the 0404 for >16bit recordings and the Valab for strickly redbook sources? Comments most welcome!! Thanks again, Adrian.

Hi there, I've been reading these posts and have a question: If Foobar, JRiver TMC 12 and 13 deliver bit perfect PCM to the USB 0404 to then be converted, how can the software players possibly sound different as described in the above posts? Surely if a signal is truely untouched there can be no difference in sound between players. Many thanks, Adrian.