sound cards vs usb dac

[nikolaos]

hi, I run a xonar stx card to power a musical fidelity a1 paired with c series Kef 4 ohm. I try to find out if using an external dac like pioneer n50 or the cambridge equivalent I would get a better sound. Unfortunately, all comparisons concentrate to internal noise. Another option is giving away card and amp and buy a cambridge cxa80, I would I appreciate your opinion, thank you in advance

[Yomanze]

That Xonar card is no slouch, why not try opamp rolling as your card uses sockets, making switching them easy. Will take a peek at the specs & recommend some! :)

Asus really know what they're doing, the grounding, layout & isolation of this unit are world-class (digital is much more difficult at gHz than it is in audio at mHz, so their computing background and motherboard design skills help here), could be worth feeding it with a better PSU, is your computer ATX powered?

[Yomanze]

Been looking at the datasheet:

http://www.ti.com/lit/ds/sles105b/sles105b.pdf

Looks like some 2x Signetics NE5532 for I/V (not NE5534 as in the datasheet!) & 1x opamp for the buffer would be well worth trying in your sound card. Both excellent opamps in the right applications, and not too expensive to try! You would ideally want to find some of the NE5332 from Signetics, they have a bit of a cult following...

EDIT: here are some that look legit: http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/Audio-Jade-Signetics-NE5532AN-Original-Dual-OP-Amp-Best-Sound-5532-Vintage-IC-/351743926187

[nikolaos]

thank you, my pc is a 7 or 8 years old pentium 4 unit and since it covers my needs I used it for my card. It seems that technically you are more expert than me, but as I understand it, the conclusion is to to change my unit to a newer one with a good motherboard and psu and keep the card, any suggestions about motherboard and psu?

[Yomanze]

thank you, my pc is a 7 or 8 years old pentium 4 unit and since it covers my needs I used it for my card. It seems that technically you are more expert than me, but as I understand it, the conclusion is to to change my unit to a newer one with a good motherboard and psu and keep the card, any suggestions about motherboard and psu?

For now, I would just change the 3x opamps in your sound card & see if you like it. :)

[nikolaos]

thank you, I will try to do it

[Yomanze]

thank you, I will try to do it

Forgot to mention, I would try using Signetics NE5532 in all 3x areas, so I/V and the buffer.

[nikolaos]

thank you, after a lot of thinking, I communicated with Alex on Burson sales. One solution was to go for the burson cable plus pro which would give me the same result with the opamp change. This is an expensive solution, but I ever change card I will be able to use it. Also I bought a seasonic 650 gold psu. Hopefully in 3 weeks time, I will be able to write down my impression

cable https://www.bursonaudio.com/products/cable-plus-pro/
psu https://seasonic.com/product/focus-plus-650-gold/

[Qwin]

OP
Try and avoid the USB bus altogether.
As a possibly cheaper alternative, use an RPi or one of the similar tini computer devices, that can accept an on board DAC, coupled to the computer board directly via an i2s socket. i2S is the dedicated internal audio bus used on most computers and is superior to USB for the task, as it doesn't carry other traffic. If you don't want to use this form of DAC, you can get an i2S coupled spidif board (opt + Coax) and output the digital to an external DAC of your choice. The on board DAC is a neat solution, as it has very short signal paths, there are plenty of users here that will confirm the excellent sound quality achievable.
The down side to the RPi is its processor/memory/storage capabilities, which limits your choice of front end apps that will run.
This is where some of the alternate platforms have an advantage, but the RPi has a larger user base and therefore more community support and also larger choice of add on hardware devices, with known compatibility.
It's a very different approach to what you were describing, but not a major outlay if you want to try it out. :)

[nikolaos]

thank you Ken, I already opted for cables and PSU an now I wait my orders

[Yomanze]

Hi Ken, just to clarify, the OP is using a sound card as his source, so no USB involved. It's a surprisingly good card with proper attention to layout & grounding & a very decent DAC chip.

[Qwin]

Hi Ken, just to clarify, the OP is using a sound card as his source, so no USB involved. It's a surprisingly good card with proper attention to layout & grounding & a very decent DAC chip.

:D The clue is in the thread tittle.

I appreciate he is already committed on a particular path and is approaching things from a different angle. :)

[Yomanze]

:D The clue is in the thread tittle.

I appreciate he is already committed on a particular path and is approaching things from a different angle. :)

Ah ha, get ya! Out of interest what problems do you see with USB? I think it does need a lot of special attention to get right, especially if the DAC has a USB input itself, guess a Raspberry Pi eliminates that variable...

[Qwin]

Ah ha, get ya! Out of interest what problems do you see with USB? I think it does need a lot of special attention to get right, especially if the DAC has a USB input itself, guess a Raspberry Pi eliminates that variable...

Yeh, there is a load of traffic on USB and devices powering off it. The internal (exclusively) Audio PC bus is i2S so a built in CD or sound card for instance, will shunt the audio to the processor using that bus. When you export using the USB the audio is handed over to that additional bus, so its just taking that process out of the path. There are devices to try and clean up the USB, but better to bypass it altogether. The Pi board etc with a "Top Hat" (piggy backed) DAC board has zero cable length which is always a good thing and is a logical approach, as the i2S goes straight into the DAC. More and more devices are starting to have i2S connections (my Stello CD Transport for one) but there is no standard, so some manufacturers use RJ45 some BNC and others use HDMI connectors, and their own protocols of course.

I have a Hypex DLCP (DSP) and in the manual they suggest avoiding USB, their digital input choice in order of preference, is AES, Spidif, Toslink, and if you must, USB.

My CD transport maker prefers the Spidif (coax) output rather than the AES, when connecting to 2nd party gear and I can confirm, that for what ever reason, it does sound better using that method. When connecting to their own partnering DAC they recommend the i2S link. Pro-Ject (RS Box Series) also recommend using the i2S on their CD/Dac combo.

i2S was originally for very short signal paths on the boards, I don't know how they get round that now, when exporting.
I think the USB was a convenient and easily implemented method of shunting information between two boxes over longer distances, but not the most ideal for critical applications like Audio.

[nikolaos]

hi, I would like to share my experiance after some time I spent working on varius solutions, on how to get quality music from youtube (yes I know the discusion but I like youtube..)
first I, according your suggestion, I powered the xonar essence card with a quality and stable power unit, I also used an intel i5, everything was closed on a silverstone orizontal box. There was a net improvment in quality. I changed the the capacitors of the musical fidelity A1 (bought in 1987 in UK), the cost was 100 euro an I serviced my 1987 kef c60 (cost 40 euro) and the result is amazing, one more thing, I added an 8" Koda subwoofer powered from the loudspeakers