Creative just released a new external USB sound card thingy, it's the Audgy NX or something like that, I saw it at best buy yesterday...I think it was $70 but that may be the cheaper version's original price, the $$ one has S/PDIF in/out, and Tos in/out, I was pretty impressed with what it had, if it was $50 I would've gotten one and reviewed it.

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Yes, agreed.
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What it guarantees is a neutral frequency response -- I'm not sure what "neutral listening" is, or how one would define that (conversationally speaking)... but RMAA does use only simple sine waves, which measures only how the card response to pure signals -- not necessarily more complex signals like music involve.
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Sure... all that stuff exists, and I'm not saying that sound cards are some sort of holy grail... only that they're a lot better than most people think, and I have data to back up my argument -- at least in areas that can be measured, which aren't everything (but neither are they nothing).

And my ears too... my soundcard sounds quite good to me, period. I suppose that last statement would tend to get more respect around here than measurements. Sometimes I feel a bit sad about the 'ears only' stance though, because a few judiciously applied measurements can help "pin down" and otherwise clarify opinions on SQ, particularly when comparing different equipment... Tyll said something I thought very eloquent about this recently in the Headroom forum. I find that measurements + ears tell a lot more than either by themselves.

Cheers,

fewtch

I don't know how true this is. But I have heard rumors of a hifi external hard drive emanating from Japan. Your home system may still be able to take on your PC for storage and whip it for quality!

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Originally posted

I don't know how true this is. But I have heard rumors of a hifi external hard drive emanating from Japan. Your home system may still be able to take on your PC for storage and whip it for quality
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I can't wait till the days when Gbytes of Flash is cheap, then you have lots of digital music on Flash, no moving parts, low power consumption, and convenient to move around. Then the large hard drives are for backups and big music archives.


Cheers,
W

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I'd be in the former.
Which goal is more important to you, the "great sound" part or the convenience part of not having to sort through your CDs? I think you're going to have to make a calculation and do a trade-off no matter what-- go for the "good sound" and invest in a new CDP (how recent is the Anthem? What was its list price?), or settle for the best you can do with a computer-based system and enjoy the convenience. But with gear like you have, it seems that "sound quality" does matter a lot to you, though. Do you think you could be happy with a PC-based source?

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The Anthem CD is about 6-7 years old. It listed for $1600 and I actually paid $1100 for it. Sound quality is definitely important to me.

I am not in either camp about whether you can get good sound from a PC--I have never heard audiophile quality sound coming from a PC, but it sure seems to me that it should be within the realms of the technology.

I am wondering whether a nice DAC (maybe the Bel Canto upsampling DAC--waiting for Jude's review) could take the digital output from hard discs and turn it into sound that equals or betters a CD transport.

One thing I have noticed in ripping CDs for my IPOD with EAC is that some of my older and more mistreated CDs cannot be perfectly read. These never skipped in my home or auto CD system. Using EAC and a hard drive, I suspect that I could feed a better quality and more consistent data stream to a good DAC than a CD transport could feed--OK at least as good if not better--it should be possible to feed a near-perfect signal to the DAC.

I all for having my cake and eating it too. Maybe not available today, it certainly seems highly possible to have great sound and convenience.

I don't think you can truly reach the supposed "audiophile" sound with a PC, but you can get ***ned good with one, that's for sure.

There are roughly 4 basic parts to a CD player that help determine sound quality:

1. Transport-- how well does it read the data? How stable is the mechanism, how much jitter is generated, yada yada.

2. DAC set/digital board including clock etc. There are few manufacturs of DACs, all CD makers draw from this small lot of producers, so differences in good-quality digital sections get smaller and smaller all the time (although you certainly do get more and better by paying more). Many computer sound cards will have impressive specs on paper because they use the same parts, or parts with similar capabilities as stand-alone CDP.

3. Analog output section. You may have a state of the art 24/192 DAC set but if hands that off to a noisy, feeble analog section, what's the point? Do not undersestimate this!

4. Power supply. Good, stable, robust clean power is crucial to good audio performance.

IMO, PC soundcards have two major disadvantages:

1. Namely a power supply designed to power a computer, not play back music in an audiophile manner. The power supply will be noisy, cheap, plus there are a lot of noise generating components in PC that aren't in a stand-alone CDP adding to the problem. This is actually a big deal, and one of the major things you get from climbing up the audiophile CDP ladder is a better and better power supply section.

2. Analog output section, which will be cheap, typically on the same board as the DAC, and a total afterthought, probably both sharing the same noisy power supply.

IMO, with these inherent built-in disadvantages, there is no sound card on Earth (no I haven't heard them all) that could touch a well-chosen, new $1200 CDP.

BTW: DAC sets have come a LONG way in the last 5 years. If you had another $1200-$1600 to invest in a new CDP, I bet it would be a significant upgrade over your Anthem.

OTOH, if you are using the computer's digital output into an outboard DAC (like the Bel Canto), the need for a good analog section is taken care of by the DAC of course. No idea how a computer compares to a decent CDP as a digital transport to an out-board DAC, but I'd bet dollars to donuts, the CDP will be better in that function.

Mark

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Which sound cards have you heard? Just curious... I'm not disputing your claim (you're probably right).

fewtch,
I don't remember the name of the one "audiophile" grade card I've spent some time with but its a 24/96 card from a couple years ago that my brother uses. When I'm there, I listen out of the headphone jack with the CD3000s I bought for him. No, haven't heard it in my system with my R10s or my HR-2, so this makes direct comparisons impossible. So, yes, of all people, you fewtch (pot kettle black ) have caught me "speculaing", but it's educated speculation, though, based on the reasons I've laid out.

My basic point is, having great DACs and a great digital section with amazing specs is all fine and well, but that's just one element of what goes into making good digital sound.

Mark

I agree with you on the second point -- the analog circuitry (in particular) on a soundcard ain't gonna be that great, at least not in any kind of "ultimate-fi" sense. However, I don't agree about it being an "afterthought" on pro-sumer and better cards, and measured noise floor (+ a couple other things) on the analog out jacks gives at least some indication of the quality of an analog section. It certainly won't be using any Blackgate caps, that much is certain. Try hooking a decent amp to your brother's card instead of listening directly, the analog section on sound cards aren't designed to directly power headphones (I can only imagine how much distortion it's adding trying to drive current-hungry low impedance cans).

As far as the first point, not sure -- most PC power supplies are switching regulated, but that power is further filtered by the motherboard before hitting any PCI cards. I think it would depend on the particular motherboard and the particular power supply... it's conceivable that you could have excellent, stable and clean power being supplied to the PCI bus. How much better a good 'audiophile grade' PS... I don't have a clue.

Anyway... I don't disagree, it's very likely that a well chosen $1200 CD player will indeed sound better. How much better I'm sure depends on the soundcard, and on the CD player.

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At least I'm not alone on that!!! Thanks mark....

I really don't think good PC power supplies are as crappy/noisy as people make them out to be(with no evidence backing either side, really). It makes sense to me a power supply in a computer will have to have pretty low ripple and noise because of the sensitive equipment inside. As Fewtch pointed out, motherboards further ensure this by providing plenty of filtering. I doubt a sensitive harddrive would like a really noisy power source, or a CPU for that matter.

The problem with a lot of soundcards are the opamps that manufacturers use. I've found that opamps can really make or break the way a component sounds, and unfortunately many consumer cards use cheap(but reliable) JRC opamps which shriek in my opinion. I've found a few cards that use good DACs, the Aureon being one(uses a Wolfson).

It's probably true you can't get analog output from a computer like you could from a really high end CDP, but you can get really good sound from it. Miles above a regular old Soundblaster anyway.

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Just to let you know, PC Power and Cooling Power Supplies are (top of the line), a lot better than ones found in audiophile-grade components, you cannot compare the lame, run-of-the-mill power supplies with PCP+C's crazy $300 dollar 550W+ PSes, which murder, filet, and roast the competition.

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Antecs aren't half bad either (I have the PP403X , I think it was around $100 at the time I bought it but has dropped way down in price -- my PC is as stable as a rock, a sign of good power). Really, any separately purchased PSU with a good reputation will wipe the floor with the cheapies included with prebuilt Dells, Gateways, cheap computer cases and such (which are often really bad -- I've seen PC cases selling for $25-$30 that include both the power supply and the case! Uggh...).