[Gibertus Jeunus]

Here's my question: I'm listening through a da100sig dac and used to do so with my essence stx. I've decided to go optical to the dac from my pc and since both my motherboard and my soundcard supply one, I don't see the aim of my soundcard except dolby decoding, which I never use. I prefer pure Hi-fi. But the essence can upsample to 96khz and then to 192 with the da100sig, I've read from Mr April music and Stello that this is better. Honestly I can't tell the difference. What's your mind ? should I keep or sell my essence?

 

[krmathis]

I say -> Sell it. Since you can not tell the difference.

 

[Currawong]

Are you saying you can't tell the difference between your Essence STX and the Stello, or tell the difference between up-sampling and no up-sampling?

 

[Gibertus Jeunus]

neither of them, of course^^
I can enjoy my stello and find it the best thing ever made for music lovers and find it thousands times better than my essence, even much better than the improvement I get when I installed my essence and switched from the onboard chip. And I'm really able to hear the difference between bypass, 24/96 and 24/192 upsampling with the stello. It's again even much more distinguishable than the essence upampling. I'm just wondering if I should keep the essence as an optical output, set at 96khz and then to the stello at 192 or direct from the motherboard to the stello 192 upsampling. And I can't tell the difference between these two settings.

 

[Currawong]

Ahh, ok, I got it. optical isn't, in my experience, really a great digital connection method (but then, neither is USB) so, especially if you can't tell the difference, I'd just sell the card if that's all you'll use it for.

 

[Gibertus Jeunus]

I would have gone coax but due to the organization of my student digs, I have to cover a 5metres distance until I get graduated. In fact, I got my stello stack since yesterday and can't imagine it even better. Thanks for advice!