[sporky]

I've had my Audiophile USB for about 4 days, and am already itching to upgrade it a little. While I'm not going to sell it and buy a different sound card, I'd really ilke to see how much performance I can squeeze out of it.

Right now I'm just listening to mp3s with foobar/winamp and A900s plugged into the headphone out. How might I improve on this setup with minimal cost?

 

[Jasper994]

One can find arguments on both sides of the fence for upsampling, but you can start by trying that. Another simple change would be to try lossless codecs like flac or ape. For giggles, you should also give Foobar2000 a try and see what you think. If you decide to stay with Winamp, try the SSRC and MAD pluggins.

Aside of that, you can try replacing the power supply I believe people have had good results with a regulated elpac.

 

[lan]

Replace the power supply. Get a power conditioner.

Try externally clocking via external device using SPDIF.

 

[noiseunit]

Get a Stancor Sta-5790 power supply and swap it with the stock AP USB psu. The Stancor is sold here. However, you will have to splice the jack on the stock psu with that of the Stancor. The jack that the Stancor uses is too large to plug into the AP USB.

A new PSU will be a noticible improvement in sound.

An external DAC is another idea...I've found the AP USB's digital output to be pretty dern good.

Or you could always do both, like I did

.

 

[sporky]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Jasper994 One can find arguments on both sides of the fence for upsampling, but you can start by trying that. Another simple change would be to try lossless codecs like flac or ape. For giggles, you should also give Foobar2000 a try and see what you think. If you decide to stay with Winamp, try the SSRC and MAD pluggins. Aside of that, you can try replacing the power supply I believe people have had good results with a regulated elpac.

I've tried the MAD pluggin, but it renders my DSP plugin functionless at anything higher than 16bits. Thank you for bringing the SSRC winamp plugins to my attention. I was unaware that they were available. It sounds much better now!

 

[sporky]

Quote:

Originally Posted by noiseunit Get a Stancor Sta-5790 power supply and swap it with the stock AP USB psu. The Stancor is sold here. However, you will have to splice the jack on the stock psu with that of the Stancor. The jack that the Stancor uses is too large to plug into the AP USB. A new PSU will be a noticible improvement in sound. An external DAC is another idea...I've found the AP USB's digital output to be pretty dern good. Or you could always do both, like I did .

Thanks for the tips. Could you recommend a good DAC to use (cost effective, of course

)?

Also, do you think these upgrades will increase the preceived warmth of the sound? My main complaint with foobar is that the sound isn't as warm or lively as with winamp and my favorite DSP plugin (enhancer v0.17). Fooling around with the software equalizer just doesn't seem to work as well. I know that foobar is technically better though, since I can use kernel streaming at 96KHz and 24bit depth with it.

 

[sporky]

bump for the above questions.

 

[ixeo]

off topic a little.. just wondering how "good" is an audiophile usb

assuming E-MU 1212m is 100%
how much % is the audiophile usb?