Quote:
Originally Posted by russdog
You've asked a reasonable question. Sadly, some posters have decided to confuse matters by stating their personal biases as if they were fact. If you have high quality mp3's, you have a good sound source. Don't let purists disuade you by their extremist positions. The idea that you shouldn't bother to improve things unless you conform to their religion about loss-less formats is absurd. The idea that you should re-rip everything you have that is in high-quality mp3 into FLAC is absurd. One thing you need to learn around here is that you need to keep your eye on the ball.
I am not familiar with your headphones or your amp. Other people know around here know more about affordable DAC's than I do, so I have no useful recommendation to make, except that you should not let bad advice discourage you. Keep your eye on the ball.
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I must agree.
Quote:
Originally Posted by KevC
I disgaree. A DAC can very well help. It will be more revealing, yes. But the sound signature may change, the smoothness and bass impact, and the quiet should be "blacker" and less noisy.
192kbps may not be nominal, but properly ripped it can sound very good.
More info: http://www6.head-fi.org/forums/showthread.php?t=190719
I don't know how good your Xfi's onboard DAC is. Shouldn't be that poor. However, you have optical out (right?).. which opens out the possibilities for many DACs.
There's a <$100 optical in DAC from DIYkits that I think you should at least check out. Sounds like the Zhaolu!
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Only these 2 posts really answer your original question - "What will a DAC do for me?"
Although the other answers here have points, the main question when it comes to computer audio is how good / bad / affected the sound card is? "Good / Bad" I am sure makes sense to you. "Affected"? That probably made no sense.
So:
The problem with computer-generated sound is that the computer internals are a very noisy environment for the very low-level voltages that occur within a Digital to Analog Converter. The sound card must get it's power from the general outputs of the power supply, which is also supplying a CPU and GPU operating in the Megahertz to Gigahertz range, plus the mezzanine bus clocks of PCI and AGP, plus all external interfaces such as USB.
This represents a large problem when you seek audio "purity" for all those clock and signal sources "infect" the main power system of the computer (usually via the ground), and this causes the DAC of the sound card (or, conversely, some sound cards use a programmable DSP chip to operate as a "DAC") to lose accuracy because of
inaccuracies given to it via it's own power source. "Good" sound cards might have some filtering to help remove the "ripple" and "noise" of the power supply, but things can only go so far - you can only remove up to a certain point when given something to work with.
An external DAC is, of course, removed from the main computer case and therefore is much more immune to these problems. If you are looking for the best level of immunity then hopefully your sound card has SPDIF optical (Toslink) out, as the optical cable electrically isolates the external DAC from the dirty computer power because the optical cable cannot carry any voltage / current / power. If your sound card only has a SPDIF "coaxial" (electrical) connection, then the external DAC can receive noise and ground loops from the computer's chassis and this will degrade the external DAC's performance.
Now, all is not perfect as the SPDIF signal that is passed from the computer, to the DAC, can incur "jitter". These are timing errors, and can happen because SPDIF does not carry any inherent "timing" signals. If the external DAC cannot / does not perfectly "sync" up to the computer digital source the external DAC can end up sounding worse than any internal sound card - regardless of the fact that the external DAC is in a significantly less noisy environment to do it's work.
Whether or not "jitter" will be a factor depends upon the sound card and DAC combination
together - does the sound card have a low amount of output jitter? Does the DAC have a high tolerance for jitter, making that point moot? How does the DAC react to the link of the two?
It's not an exact science.
Will a $200 DAC make your system sound better?
Oooh, that's tough.
Going out on a limb...
Probably, it will. But NOBODY can say Yes or No because there are WAY too many factors in the equation. You'll probably just have to try, but it hopefully will make a nice difference for you once "all your ducks are in a row".
If you do decide to get the DAC, once you do you MAY indeed wish to switch to lossless compression. Why? Why not. If you are upgrading to get the best sound possible for your complete rig then switching over to the best sounding source - not "losing any data" - can't do anything but help.
