jspar7

A major problem with Computer HiFi is Jitter, an annoying shimmer or agitation in the sound of digital recording playback. Mr. Altmann has a great site where he addresses the topic of Jitter: http://www.jitter.de/english/engc_navfr.html

OK- Nobody is going believe this- but I get GREAT, AMAZING sound directly off my motherboard. I have an ASUS A8N-E, a motherboard with an optical out for sound. This mobo can be set for "digital out" through the optical cable. This goes to an ARCAM AVR350 http://www.arcam.co.uk/prod_diva_AVR350_intro.cfm which does the D to A conversion. This then goes to a pair of Era design 5's http://www.signalpathint.com/index.php/Design-5-Series. Keep in mind, I am not using the DACs (there are 4 on this mobo) on the motherboard. The chip sends S/PDif code out to the arcam. I constantly hear how bad onboard sound is, and how noisy the computer environment is.... So I tried an experiment. I hooked up an Edirol UA 25 usb dac/ recording device that can sample up to 24/96. It is external, encased in thick aluminum, has an optical out, and is of professional sound quality. I thought it would produce better sound than the Asus A8N-E because it is external and "pro." To my surprise, there was NO comparison, the motherboard trounced the Edirol UA-25 hands down. The motherboard had better clarity and much wider soundstage. Contrary to popular opinion- this configuraton: Foobar 2000> ASUS A8N-E> optical out> Arcam> ERA design 5's. Has crystal clear sound, a wide soundstage, almost no jitter, and a nice black background. It seems the motherboard is passing good clean optical data to the arcam which wrings every drop of fidelity out of the recording. The point? unlike coax spdif, the optical link stops quite a bit of noise. When connected to high quality receiver with new DACs, ect. you can get true HiFi sound right off the motherboard.

Here are some other usb DACs I discovered. This one has a very warm sound, upsamples and uses the Bur-brown chip: http://www.psaudio.com/products/digital_link_iii.asp Then Scott Nixon goes for the straight through- minimal signal path approach with this great little tube DAC: http://www.audioreview.com/USBTDcrx.aspx http://www.scott-nixon.com/dac.htm The very high end USB DAC from Bel Canto: http://www.6moons.com/audioreviews/bcddac3/dac3.html And Finally, the USB receiver from Outlaw Audio- the world's biggest soundcard: http://www.outlawaudio.com/reviews/reviews_990.html