[chesebert]

I was playing with EVGA's old Nu sound card and accidentally discovered that EVGA Nu has impressive toslink output for use as a streamer. I happen to also have Emm Labs NS1 streamer and EVGA put up a more than reasonable fight for like 1/25 of the cost of the Emm Labs unit. You will obviously be limited to 192khz max through toslink and you need a PC (competently built with decent power supply) powered by relatively clean AC power. If your PC is on some dirty AC line, you can power EVGA Nu separately through a linear power supply with SATA power connector (EVGA sound card is not PCIE bus powered).

For those on a budget, I think EVGA Nu is a great way to get music from the PC to your DAC.

 

[tapelion]

I was playing with EVGA's old Nu sound card and accidentally discovered that EVGA Nu has impressive toslink output for use as a streamer. I happen to also have Emm Labs NS1 streamer and EVGA put up a more than reasonable fight for like 1/25 of the cost of the Emm Labs unit. You will obviously be limited to 192khz max through toslink and you need a PC (competently built with decent power supply) powered by relatively clean AC power. If your PC is on some dirty AC line, you can power EVGA Nu separately through a linear power supply with SATA power connector (EVGA sound card is not PCIE bus powered).

For those on a budget, I think EVGA Nu is a great way to get music from the PC to your DAC.

EVGA Nu is definitely a gem for PC to your DAC combo.

 

[AnalogEuphoria]

The owner of EVGA is audiophile so it explains why the extra effort went in and It’s even using audio note parts (pro version) which is very surprising.

 

[chesebert]

I added a dedicated Super Flower 850watt PSU to power the Nu Audio card as a streamer. The sound has gained greater authority, body, dynamic, space and bass slam. I expected the sound to get better with a separate PSU but the difference was actually pretty stark. I added a jumper to the ATX plug but you can buy a separate trigger input plug so the PSU powers up the same time as the PC.

If you are using a USB dac with your PC, you should try out Nu Audio (using toslink) with a dedicated PSU. I think you will be surprised at the improvement.

 

[chesebert]

I bought a second unit as backup. Its optical output is better than any USB output I have heard.

 

[chesebert]

Have been using the EVGA for almost 2 years now and my assessment remains the same. As a streamer, it's on the warm side, fairly open, with good tonality and dynamics. The most impressive aspect of the EVGA is it's not offensive to listen to and nothing jumps out as being unbalanced soundwize.

I have since stopped using the EVGA as a streamer and now using it exclusive as a pure DAC outputting Gilmore Lite mk2/GRPS. As a dac, the EVGA is probably as good as anything $500 and perhaps even up to $1k depending on the rest of your system (eg using a separate PSU for the card) . The sound profile is similar to using the EVGA as a streamer, except you can tell it's a budget dac as it's not as refined, tonality is not there, resoultion is not great, bass response is okay and not as dyanmic as better stuff. Just like using it as a streamer, the best thing I can say is EVGA sounds balanced and not offensive in any way - I can absolutely enjoy music on this dac unlike some other Chi-Fi dacs.

 

[chesebert]

EVGA is back on streamer duty with its own dedicated PSU and sounds great as a source for Emm Labs dac2xv2. More analog sounding than Emm Labs' own NS1 and I got some of the best sounds out of the Emm Labs dac.

I bought another NuAudio and that will go into a dedicated streamer at some point.