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Soundcard vs. Soundcard + external DAC - Page 6

post #76 of 83
7/18/04 at 5:29am
You're now straddling the fence between the two source forums, Peter.

-Ed
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post #77 of 83
7/18/04 at 10:33am
Damn you guys. I was just getting used to being "Wowed" by my E-MU, figuring there was nothing that could touch it in my price range... and now you're telling me that I'm only a couple paychecks away from a whole other level of sound quality.

I hate this place.
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post #78 of 83
7/18/04 at 11:26am
Skarecrow, the benchmark isn't in the same price range.
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post #79 of 83
7/18/04 at 11:37am
Quote:
Originally Posted by ted_b
Motherboards with spdif outs (i.e onboard audio) are an interesting option but they STILL need to bypass the damn Windows mixer or the sound is no where NEAR bit-perfect.
That is, if you use Winbloze at all. Cards which are capable of bit-perfectness at a given sampling rate will be with ALSA (advanced linux sound architecture). Which is a half answer for kODOMA. The other half of the question being whether the chaintech is Linux compatible at all. I don't know the answer to that, but you should be able to find out at alsa-project.org.
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post #80 of 83
7/18/04 at 11:56am
Quote:
Originally Posted by lan
Skarecrow, the benchmark isn't in the same price range.
Yeah, it's not in my price range, but neither were the HD650s or the perreaux when I first started. My price range keeps getting bigger to accommodate what I really want. Unfortunatly, my paycheck won't do the same. I gotta figure that's a common problem around here, haha.
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post #81 of 83
7/18/04 at 2:26pm
Quote:
Originally Posted by Skarecrow
Yeah, it's not in my price range, but neither were the HD650s or the perreaux when I first started. My price range keeps getting bigger to accommodate what I really want. Unfortunatly, my paycheck won't do the same. I gotta figure that's a common problem around here, haha.
I know the feeling. I started out with a $80 source (GTXP) and $120 cans (HD590). Look at me now, heh.
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post #82 of 83
7/18/04 at 2:39pm
<--- Started with a 5-year old SoundBlaster PCI128 + HD535. Wonder where I'll end up in a couple of years
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post #83 of 83
7/19/04 at 2:39am
Quote:
Originally Posted by cosmopragma
It works!
I've just borrowed a 1 meter( 3 feet) 240$ Toslink cable and tested it against a cheap 10 meter (33 feet) cable (25 $).
No audible difference.
To my ears, indeed.
I like the manual of Benchmark DAC a lot. It has a lot of measurement geaphs made with Audio Precision equipment. For example, it shows that using 100 ft of Belkin bulk cable to increase jitter does not produce any jitter-related artifacts. It also shows that its headphone output under 60 ohm load is almost identical to its balanced out in THD+N measurements. This implies its headphone circuit produces almost minimal THD+N type of distrotion on a single-freq test tone. At +14dBu and 0 dBFS, its THD+N is -108dB into 60 ohm load at 1 kHz. That is the best measurement of a headphone amp I have seen. Of course this does not suggest it is the best-sounding headphone amp out there. But it is interesting to see what parameters the engineers are looking into when they design this product, in addition to just listening.
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