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audioxtremist

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  1. I have a selection of Blu-ray concerts which I play in 2-channel. I also have a DAC which I am using for playing the Blu-rays. Currently I have a Gen. 1 PS3 which connects to the DAC via optical connection. However, I have noticed that the optical connection does not sound as good as the coax connection, at least in my setup. So I am looking at a way to connect to my DAC via coax instead of optical for Blu-ray concerts. I have an HTPC with an Asus Essence STX sound card which connects to the DAC via coax so I was thinking of buying a blu-ray drive for the HTPC. Would this produce high quality 2-ch audio? What are your experiences with a PC as a 2-ch blu-ray player. Am I better off buying a blu-ray player with Coax output? I can pick up a BD-ROM for $80 or a Blu-ray player for $80, so it comes down to which sounds the best really.
  2. I have used both of these cards in my Hi-Fi setup. I am currently using the Asus Xonar Essence STX. I can't speak for the headphone outputs, but in regards to the stereo outputs of these two cards the Asus is the winner. Feature wise, and for gaming, I would give the nod to the Creative, but when it comes to pure sound quality/fidelity the Asus is a nicer sounding card. If you are looking for more refinement the Asus is the better option, so long as it meets your needs feature wise.
  3. So after using the Creative USB sound card for a while I decided to give the Asus Xonar Essence STX internal sound card another try. I finally found the source of the ground loop. In case anyone else has a similar problem, here is my setup and how i fixed it. PC -> Sound card (Asus Xonar Essence STX) -> DAC via SPDIF Coax -> Integrated Amp -> Speakers All fine and good right? There's more: PC -> A/V Receiver via HDMI -> Projector Still fine, now for the problem connection: A/V Receiver Front Channel RCA Pre-Outs -> Integrated Amp This final connection was creating a ground loop through the PC. The solution isn't great, basically remove the A/V Rcvr -> Amp connection while listenting to PC music, and connect it and remove the PC -> DAC connection when listening to AV sources (Blu-Ray). Hope that helps others. And the results? Superb sound. Now that I can use the internal sound card without ground hum, the internal sound card really trumps the USB sound card that I had. A lot more clarity, presence, and detail. Really enjoying the music again.
  4. I havent tried screens, but i have tried a few others, and iTap VNC blows the others away. At $10 its a good balance of quality and value.
  5. Thanks for the warning. Like I said, "Time to research...", and after reading your review on this site I noticed that you said it is not properly isolated. I will look further. I see you recommend the Halide Design Bridge. I will spend the money if it makes sense. My only hesitation is the lack of 176.4kHZ and 192kHZ sampling rate processing. Do you know of any good options that offer quad-rate sampling?
  6. Thanks for the help. It's a big relief to get this solved. Time to do more research and spend more money. This seems to be a theme in the audiophile hobby, lol.
  7. So I hooked up my old USB sound card, Creative Live! 24-bit External, which has SPDIF coax output. No more whine! I cranked the volume all the way up and there was nothing but silence. Perfect! Now the question is where do I go to next? Obviously the Creative card is not good enough quality to match the rest of my system. Will a device like the HiFace have noise, or is it well isolated like my USB soundcard? Any other suggestions?
  8. Yes, the whine is coming from the speakers, not the gear itself. I don't have a HiFace, but I do have a USB soundcard which has COAX output that I could try. I'll give that a shot and let you know the results. If that fails I'll try putting the soundcard into another computer and see what that does.
  9. Not exactly sure what you mean by vary with volume. If I turn down the volume then the whine goes away. It is only present when I turn up the volume to 3/4 or more. Also, it changes depending what the computer is doing. If the HDD is going then i hear different noises. Depending whats on the screen it can be slightly different too. I tried changing the coax cable, didn't help. I don't have a cheater plug, I heard those are dangerous so I don't really want to try that. I did try unplugging everything else on the line and that didnt help. But basically the only thing that causes problems is having the computer connected to the DAC via coax or USB.
  10. I will contact Simaudio (the maker of Moon products) and find out if it is galvanically isolated. I couldn't find anything on their website indicating that it is. So the question is, what is the lesser of the two evils, a slight hum/whine at high volume, or slightly lesser audio quality (from my initial listening impressions)? Does the hum cause any degradation of the sound quality or is it just a hum and if I can't hear it when playing music then it doesn't really affect quality?
  11. I recently purchased a Moon 300D DAC. First off, excellent DAC, definitely recommend it. My current setup is as follows: Asus Xonar Essence STX > Moon 300D DAC via Coax > Moon i5.3 Integrated > Paradigm Studio 60s The problem is when the coax is plugged in I get whine/hum at high volume. If I use TOSLINK optical instead, everything is great, very little hum at high volume. I get whine/hum with USB also, but USB is not recommended connection anyways (as said by Moon themselves! (for this particular DAC only)). You may ask, then why not use optical? Well, I find the audio quality is noticeably inferior in my case, my geuss is the sound card's optical converter isn't as good as its coax. So I'm stuck with Coax. How can I get rid of this hum? Everything is plugged into the same power bar. I've tried plugging things into separate outlets, didn't help. Ideas?
  12. So i tried the iPhone app and that one works. I contacted the developer of plugplayer and he said the iPad app currently does not support multitasking, but a new version should be out in about a week. So good news there.
  13. I've been using PlugPlayer to control Foobar from the iPad, however, there is a fairly annoying issue with it. When you close it it does not continue to the next track when a track ends, even in iOS 4.2. I have tried many other UPNP apps for the iPad yet none of them seem to support Foobar except PlugPlayer. I used to use the Apple Remote app, but it has stopped working correctly with Foobar. Are there any other options? I'm going to stick with Foobar and the iPad, I love those two things, I just need to get them to work together nicely. PlugPlayer is very close, I've posted a topic in the PlugPlayer forum so we'll see what the developer has to say. Wanted to see what CA uses for their Foobar-iPad setups.
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