Angellus-Andy

I put the Titanium sound card in my PC this afternoon, coz lets face it playing with audio gear is much more important than doing real work This what my ears tell me.... The NAD CD player still sounds the best for CD playback. So...if the NAD CD player, playing a CD is 100% the best i can achieve referance with my current gear.... Optical output of FLAC files improved from say 96% with the motherboard optical out to 98% using the Titanium optical out. CD playback on the PC rather than FLAC souce files improves this to say 99%. 24 / 96 I think has improved a lot using the Titanium optical out. I was listening to Metallica's Black Album from 24/96 FLAC souce files this morning through the motherboards optical out ( probably not a good choice of souce material, but hey, Its what I had on) it sounded ok, but nothing special. After playing though the Titanium output this afternoon my impressions where "this sounds pretty damb good". I need to spend time listing to more 24 / 96. Conclusions... A better S/PDIF optical out has improved things. For CD playback the NAD CD player still sounds the best. However when I had to answer the phone and came back I mistakenly thought I was litening to the CD player, when I was listening to a FLAC rip through the Titanium ( maybe I'm becoming to anal ) My E100 speakers are suposed to be up there towards referance quality ( very debatable ) and do have great detail, and sound stage. I think these small differences I'm hearing would not be as noticable on a DAC/Amp/Speaker setup costing $5000-$6000AU or less. Things are getting to the point I need to stop chasing that extra 1% out my PC and upgrade this Yamaha RX-V3900 amp. Thanks for the help guys

I found a Creative Titanium Fatal1ty Pro card in my box of second hand PC parts. Any thougths on this as purly an optical out? http://au.creative.com/products/product.asp?category=209&subcategory=669&product=17791&nav=1 Or another option is i can pick up and ESI Maya 44 at wholesale cost. I cant find a cheap Juli@ localy.

Thanks for that info Chris. I did listen to a couple of DAC's and auditioned one back to back with the NAD CD player on my setup. IMHO the DAC in the NAD CD player ($899AU) sounded better than stand alone DAC's costing $700AU or less. Which is one of the reasons why my first thoughts where the optical output from the PC is not bit perfect. My next question would be can anyone recomend a S/PDIF output that has high quality optical for stereo sound through the NAD, and COAX to run direct to the amp for 5.1 decoding? I would like to go with an internal card if there is such an animal out there? I have seen some recomendations for an ASUS sound card, however i dont need a sound card that has a resonable DAC. I dont need any analoge sound output from the PC at all, just a good digital out. I would also like to avoid spending $500+ on a USB device if posable.

Hey Guys Im a bit of noob to the audiophile side of computer music. However i have been a PC tech and done some amature music recording on PC for many years. I've added some extra details here to incase im making some mistakes im not aware of you guys can see. My setup before getting to the amp is currently Win 7 & J River outpuing in WASAPI > Gigabyte GA-P55DS3P optical output > $50 Ok quality TOSLINK cable > NAD BEE565EE CD player optical in/DAC. My problem is CD's sound better played on the NAD than audio from the PC to the NAD's DAC. The computer playback still sounds very good and pretty close to the CD sound, but loses a little detail and some of the sound stage. This happens both with CD's played on the PC and files ripped to FLAC with dBpoweramp. Im guessing that the TOSLINK output on the $150 motherboard is the week link? or has anyone had any experience with the NAD's optical input and had the same problem? Or is something going on im missing completely?