It all started when I decided to upgrade my old crappy computer speakers to something better. Originally, I had a quite modest goal: getting something which is good enough so that I would be able to enjoy listening to music from my computer, with a ~100$ budget. After I did some readings about different speakers, I learned that I could get something better than the usual Logitech/Creative/Altec stuff by moving to entry-level studio monitors instead of 2.1 speakers.
I was about to buy m-audio AV40's, when I read somewhere here that the BX5As are much better, and decided to search ebay just to see how much I need to stretch my budget just to get these (even used ones). It turns out someone on ebay was selling BX5As from liquidation for 109$ or best offer. I offered 100$, and got them. At this price I was expecting them to be the old model, and to be in pretty poor cosmetic shape, and I was surprised to find that these are actually the deluxe ones, and they came in their original box and look just like new. Furthermore, maybe I was just imagining it, but it seems to me like after playing them for a couple of hours, their sound kind of "opened up", which means they may be entirely new. This may have been the best deal I ever got out of ebay.
So now I got really good speakers for my computer, they sound unbelievably good, and I truly enjoy listening to them. But then I started thinking - maybe I'm still missing something and not realizing their full potential by using my desktop's onboard sound card, and not something better. The sound I get from my desktop isn't all that bad: it's pretty clean, with no hiss or any other audible noises, but I might be missing some clarity and detail.
So now, my question is: could I get some noticeable improvement by using a budget USB DAC or discrete sound card, instead of my onboard sound, and which one should I get? Some points to consider:
- It was never my original intention to get a true audiophile-level sound out of my computer. Now that I got the taste of better sound, I am hungry for more, but I still do not expect a true hi-fi sound with my budget.
- I am looking for something quite cheap: around 60$
- The music I listen to is mostly in MP3 format - most are compressed to 192kbps, some better, some worse. So some detail is lost already, and my speakers, while great for their price range, are not 2000$ speakers, so this is also a limiting factor.
- Having a volume control knob on the DAC is nice, but definitely not a must. I assigned hot keys to control the volume through my computer's keyboard, and it works well enough for me.
- I am dual booting my computer between Windows and Linux, so I prefer something that does not require proprietary drivers.
- I don't mind buying used equipment, but so far I couldn't find a lot of used stuff at this price range. I don't have any experience with DIY and don't have the necessary equipment.
I checked ebay and did some reading here, and found few options:
There are several different PCM270x based DACs, such as "DAC Destroyer" and some generic Chinese equipment (the cheapest version of the "Muse" DAC). Is this likely to get me a real improvement over my onboard sound?
Some other Chinese DACs are using different chipsets, and I wonder which one is going to be better. For instance, there is this one, based on TDA1305T. I read a little about it, and it seems like this chip, though kind of outdated now, was used in high-end units in the past, but I'm a bit suspicious of this one, because its price seems too cheap:
Any other ideas?
, or use google product search.
