What to do with Behringer uca202?

[rainy]

I made a mistake of buying the Behringer uca-202 thinking their RCA outs will be at least decent. Instead, I get extremely quiet volume (with ld mkIII and pl-2500s) and a lot of noise. All in all, much worse than standard line out from on-board sound card.

I need half-decent sound quality from rhapsody and flac files I have. I was hoping for a step up from on board line-level out, budget is around $40. Is there a good cheap dac which I could feed from uca-202 optical out, and which would have rca outs; or should I just get a complete usb dac?

I've heard that alien dac is good and cheap, are there other contenders in this price bracket?

One other related question is that I'd like to have a switch of two inputs for ld mkIII, without degrading primary source and with some small degradation of computer source, if that's possible - I was thinking about an rca Y-splitter, but I'm not sure if that will degrade sound quality from main source appreciably? thanks!

[breakfastchef]

I picked up the UCA202 just for the USB to optical out. I run it into a Beresford TC-7510. I also noted the useless RCA outputs as you described.

If you want to DIY an Alien DAC, I understand they are pretty decent. Depending on your budget, you should be able to pick up a used Zhalou, Zero or Beresford in the FS section.