Topic: Extrenal DAC vs Soundcard

[Stagea]

I'm just speaking based on experience:

The signal-to-noise ratio of quality discreet sound cards are surprisingly good. I have not experienced any noise or interference issues with my old Sound Blaster Audigy. My conclusion here is that a good sound card installed in a PC with well designed and built components, particularly the motherboard and power supply, will not have noise and interference problems. Onboard audio is another story, though. It's still noisy as hell.

I've had a USB DAC that actually performed worse than my sound card. It had this persistent buzzing noise that I couldn't get rid of. It also messed up the frequency response audibly and when measured. Not sure if I got a defective unit but I got rid of it nonetheless.

Now, I'm using a Beresford TC-7510 DAC hooked up to my PC via optical SPDIF and all I can say is that it definitely sounds better than the Audigy with both A/B and blind tests.

Its would be best to try out different configurations and stick with what works with you best.

I agree with sticking with what works for each one.

I feel that it's largely dependent on the components you choose, and how your PC is configured. A powerful PC that demands a lot of power tends to get more ripple from the power supply under load (even if it's a fairly high grade power supply), and is of course exposed to more noise inside the chassis. I had an Audigy 4 Pro in a noisy PC before, and it had a noisy analogue output in that PC when running under load (granted that PC is running SLI, and had a power hungry Pentium D pushed to the limits in terms of clocking and signalling levels). The same sound card was fairly quiet (though I won't call it high quality) in my current i7 rig, before I switched over to digital outs + outboard DACs/Decoders for PC use.

[Stagea]

I agree that we should stick with what works for us.

I think it's largely dependent on the configuration. I had an Audigy 4 Pro in the past that was installed in a noisy PC (SLI + SCSI RAID setup with a Pentium D pushed to the limits in clocking and signalling levels). The noise floor rose considerably under load, as the PC ramped up clocks and voltages. I've tried three high grade power supplies on this PC, to no avail. Stock clocks and voltages helped, but there was still that audible noise floor. The Yamaha SW-1000XG seemed to have better noise rejection despite the lower specs (perhaps they had different design tolerances... plus the fact that the specs are probably written for just the board itself, without factoring noise from adjacent components/devices). Too bad the SW-1000XG wasn't able to handle 24-bit audio, and didn't accelerate consumer-level applications.

When I transferred the same sound card (Audigy 4 Pro) to an undervolted i7, it was very quiet (though I still wouldn't call its output high quality). I think the ASUS Xonar's shielding is a step towards the right direction, but it probably won't be as good as a decent outboard solution. I have an X-Fi Titanium and an EMU at the moment, but I just use their digital outputs to feed outboard ASRCs and DACs.

I don't see myself going back to analogue outputs from a PC, unless they build something spectacular (or if I really need to downscale).

[squatt3r]

currently test fitting a DAC to be paired with my T amp. goodbye to the noise coming from my computer.

[FrancisD]

Buzzing noise from USB DAC / SoundCard

In my experience the cause is usually a faulty usb / grounded usb port. Try another usb port or the port of another computer. If the buzzing stays, your usb dac is defective.

Also, the spdif built in with motherboard is not so good. With really good systems, you would need a good soundcard with spdif out to connect to an audiophile dac. There is a difference you can hear. But the difference is only apparent in audiophile systems. The kind where the dac you are using is at the point where there is no usb based counterpart. So only choice is to output digital optical or coaxial to the external dac.

I think the best usb dac I have seen is at the mid fi level.