nightfire
500+ Head-Fier
- Joined
- Feb 13, 2006
- Posts
- 559
- Likes
- 2
Hi everyone!
It's been ages.
Other hobbies have kept me busy over the past few years, but with winter approaching, figure I'll be spending a lot of time indoors with nothing better to do.. so let the upgrade cycle begin again.
So, this question isn't specifically headphone related as I'm still pretty happy with my DA10/K1000 rig. It's about my loudspeaker/ht rig, but there's no group more knowledgeable and trustworthy when comes to audio than head-fi.
So I've got a Harman Kardon AVR-75 I want to upgrade. The amp is so-so. I've got some heavily modified Paradigm Titan v3's, and they're exposing too many flaws in the high end (using a sub for lows anyway). The amp is hooked to my htpc via toslink from a Turtle Beach Montego DDL (w/AC3 encoder for multichannel gaming!), and the PC is the only source.
I was looking at the Pioneer Elite line, as it's gotten rave reviews.. but the more I thought about it, the more I realized.. I don't really need a receiver at all. I only have one source, and that source can perform better processing than any amp could. Maybe it would be better to look for a higher-end multichannel amp, and simply feed it directly from the pc.
Which brings me to my question. I've been searching, and I can't find anything useful.. which surprises me given it's been a few years since I looked at DACs.
Does anyone make a pure USB multichannel DAC? I recognize that, by definition, a DAC is simply a soundcard... so the obvious answer is "duh, yes."
But what I mean is - does anyone make something higher-end (ie. DAC1/DA10 level) that appears to Windows as a 6 channel sound card, with 6 line-level balanced outputs?
Alternatively, does anyone know of a standard 5.1/7.1 channel A/V receiver with a USB input that turns it into a sound card?
I really want to eliminate S/PDIF as its low bandwidth is a real problem for multichannel audio.
Finally, if what I'm looking for doesn't exist, can anyone recommend a cost-no-object high quality 6ch+ PCI or USB sound card with low-noise, low-distortion DACs?
Thanks all!
It's been ages.
Other hobbies have kept me busy over the past few years, but with winter approaching, figure I'll be spending a lot of time indoors with nothing better to do.. so let the upgrade cycle begin again.So, this question isn't specifically headphone related as I'm still pretty happy with my DA10/K1000 rig. It's about my loudspeaker/ht rig, but there's no group more knowledgeable and trustworthy when comes to audio than head-fi.
So I've got a Harman Kardon AVR-75 I want to upgrade. The amp is so-so. I've got some heavily modified Paradigm Titan v3's, and they're exposing too many flaws in the high end (using a sub for lows anyway). The amp is hooked to my htpc via toslink from a Turtle Beach Montego DDL (w/AC3 encoder for multichannel gaming!), and the PC is the only source.
I was looking at the Pioneer Elite line, as it's gotten rave reviews.. but the more I thought about it, the more I realized.. I don't really need a receiver at all. I only have one source, and that source can perform better processing than any amp could. Maybe it would be better to look for a higher-end multichannel amp, and simply feed it directly from the pc.
Which brings me to my question. I've been searching, and I can't find anything useful.. which surprises me given it's been a few years since I looked at DACs.
Does anyone make a pure USB multichannel DAC? I recognize that, by definition, a DAC is simply a soundcard... so the obvious answer is "duh, yes."
But what I mean is - does anyone make something higher-end (ie. DAC1/DA10 level) that appears to Windows as a 6 channel sound card, with 6 line-level balanced outputs?
Alternatively, does anyone know of a standard 5.1/7.1 channel A/V receiver with a USB input that turns it into a sound card?
I really want to eliminate S/PDIF as its low bandwidth is a real problem for multichannel audio.
Finally, if what I'm looking for doesn't exist, can anyone recommend a cost-no-object high quality 6ch+ PCI or USB sound card with low-noise, low-distortion DACs?
Thanks all!
