[bleudeciel16]

I'm considering buying the Schiit Bifrost.  The USB addon is $100 extra.
 
So... the point of using an external DAC is to get it outside of the noisy pc case, right?  So through the usb, you get un-touched un-altered pure sound.  Right?
 
so, if you use spdif, that comes from either the motherboard's onboard audio or the soundcard, right?  does that mean that the sound has been altered by either the onboard sound or the soundcard?  which seems to me would render the dac useless if you're letting the soundcard or onboard audio molest the audio before it gets to the dac?
 
or maybe i just don't understand how this works?
 
my motherboard is the asus z77 sabertooth and it has optical spdif out on the back panel.  would this be better than usb?  (it would save me $100)

 

[Sapientiam]

USB and SPDIF carry only information about sound, not sound itself. The information is robust against noise. Toslink (optical) has problems with jitter (its not a very wide bandwidth link) so might not be better than USB. If you can find a DAC with good jitter rejection then Toslink is indeed the way to go because it gives much better isolation from PC noise than USB.

 

[mock-up]

Buy Arcam rDac. It has superb USB-input.

 

[PurpleAngel]

Quote:

I'm considering buying the Schiit Bifrost.  The USB addon is $100 extra.
So... the point of using an external DAC is to get it outside of the noisy pc case, right?  So through the usb, you get un-touched un-altered pure sound.  Right?
so, if you use spdif, that comes from either the motherboard's onboard audio or the soundcard, right?  does that mean that the sound has been altered by either the onboard sound or the soundcard?  which seems to me would render the dac useless if you're letting the soundcard or onboard audio molest the audio before it gets to the dac?
or maybe i just don't understand how this works?
my motherboard is the asus z77 sabertooth and it has optical spdif out on the back panel.  would this be better than usb?  (it would save me $100)

Most audio today is stored or processed in a digital form, amplifier are analog (wave), we hear analog (wave).
Optical, coaxial & USB are a digital (zero & ones) signal.
Electrical noise inside the computer case can affect an analog (wave) signal.
So with optical, coaxial & USB, you are sending the digital signal out of the computer to an external DAC (Digital to Analog Converter).
As you are creating the analog signal outside the computer case, the computer's electrical noise can not affect the analog signal.
 
Sound cards inside the computer case come with a built in DAC, as does an on-board sound card.
So the analog signal is created (using a DAC) inside the computer case, were you take the chance the analog signal is affected by electrical noise.
Usually on-board sound uses the lower cost DACs, add-on sound cards usually carry better DACs, external DACs can be better then sound card DACs.
 
USB carries a 2-channel digital signal (stereo)
Optical and coaxial can carry up to a 6-channel digital signal.

 

[BeAsTMode4MVP]

    I know this thread is ancient, but I have been googling this topic for the past 2 hours and I still do not understand the topic fully. Most of the threads I have looked at are people giving their opinions on which connection sounds best (subjective). My only question: When using the coaxial connection between my computer and DAC, are all of the computer parts related to re-producing sounds essentially "turned off" in favor of the external DAC chip? Isn't the whole point of the external DAC to bypass the computer entirely? Thanks.
 
 
    By the way, my coaxial ports are on the motherboard if that makes any difference.

 

[brunk]

    I know this thread is ancient, but I have been googling this topic for the past 2 hours and I still do not understand the topic fully. Most of the threads I have looked at are people giving their opinions on which connection sounds best (subjective). My only question: When using the coaxial connection between my computer and DAC, are all of the computer parts related to re-producing sounds essentially "turned off" in favor of the external DAC chip? Isn't the whole point of the external DAC to bypass the computer entirely? Thanks.


    By the way, my coaxial ports are on the motherboard if that makes any difference.

Yes, you are sending out the original, digital signal to an external DAC so it can go from digital to analog. Thats what a DAC stands for: Digital Analog Converter.