[cutthroat]

Hello there.
I've decided to start building a computer rig. I figure it will be easier to have all my music in digital format rather than switching CD's all the time. I am going to purchase a separate tower that will be dedicated to audio. My digital music is mostly FLAC with just a little 320kps MP3.

I have about $500 to spend on a sound card, or DAC or both. I am just a little confused as to what would be the best.

The tower I plan to get will have a 400gb hard drive, 2.2ghz processor, and 2gb ram, but will only have on board sound.

All of my listening will be done through headphones. So what should I be looking at? I am definitely going to buy a better sound card, but I don't know which ones are good. Would a standalone DAC be better for headphone listening? Which DAC's are good? USB or optical output/input?

Any help would be appreciated, I'm just a little confused as to where I should start.

 

[TheVinylRipper]

Computers are multipurpose tools, I have two which I use for ripping vinyl. The dedicated to recording one is just an old 1.5 gHz Celeron with 256 megs of pc2700 ram and an Audiophile 2496 sound card. It has absolutely no problem keepin up with 24 bit 96 kHz digitizing or playback. But that is all it does..

Unless you are doing a lot of DSP on your sound files the computer you mention is major overkill just for audio. It's like buying a Ferriari and never taking it over 55 mph.

My main computer I have shown on the "post pictures of your rig" thread on this forum. I do everything on it from web surfing to flight sim to intense audio, video and digital image processing.

If it were me, I would buy two large fast hard drives and run them as a RAID 0 setup, that doubles the capacity and increases the speed a lot too.

I bought two Barracuda 7200 rpm SATA drives for a very good price here:

http://www.geeks.com/details.asp?inv...27AS-R&cat=HDD

If you don't have SATA on your motherboard you can buy PCI SATA RAID cards quite cheaply.

http://cgi.ebay.com/4-Port-SATA-SERI...QQcmdZViewItem

There are others here more qualifed to tell you about DAC's and things like that so I will leave that up to them.

 

[cutthroat]

Thanks for the reply. I considered getting an additional hard drive at first, but I can get the computer I mentioned in the original post for a stupid good price from my buddy, so I'll buy it regardless of whether I use it for audio/filesharing or something else.

I still am interested in other members opinions on sound cards and DACs (maybe a USB DAC). I plan on getting a dedicated power supply for my Lisa III, so that could be my desktop amp.

 

[TheVinylRipper]

Quote:

Originally Posted by cutthroat /img/forum/go_quote.gif Thanks for the reply. I considered getting an additional hard drive at first, but I can get the computer I mentioned in the original post for a stupid good price from my buddy, so I'll buy it regardless of whether I use it for audio/filesharing or something else. I still am interested in other members opinions on sound cards and DACs (maybe a USB DAC). I plan on getting a dedicated power supply for my Lisa III, so that could be my desktop amp.

That puts things in a different light..

Spend a little money on making it quiet if it isn't already.

Quiet power supply, quiet cooling fans...

 

[infinitesymphony]

A $500 DAC is probably better than the studio sound card idea (ex. Lynx). I don't remember hearing about standout DACs in that price range. You may want to try the "All the DACs Money Can Buy" thread.

 

[cutthroat]

a meier-audio aria, or cantate look appealing. I could also just get the headroom micro DAC, and use my Lisa as an amp...

 

[poo]

All nice options really - if you listen to each you will find one you prefer a little... Might be something as insignificant as the way the volume dial feels, or the way it will fit somewhere better than the others. Most likely though, the sound of one will be nicer to you than the others. It isn't something that can be decided for you...

 

[xenithon]

You could do it in a stepwise fashion, which is what I did.

First I got an Edirol UA-1EX USB interface. It was far superior to both onboard sound and the external sound cards I tried. It has both ditigal output (optical) and analog outs - in the latter case, the Edirol acts both as your interface with the PC and as the DAC. You can then buy a good amp and use the analog inputs.

Then once funds allow, you can look into getting a dedicated DAC. The two options here are a) get a DAC with USB input to replace the Edirol; or b) you can get any DAC with optical digital input, connect the Edirol's digital output to it, and connect the DAC's analog output to your amp. That way the the Edirol is used strictly for taking bit-perfect out of the PC and to your DAC.