[noparanoia]

Hi,
To cut a very long story short(er); a few months ago I had a new pc built. I can upload specs if anyone wants them. It has a cheap Realtek built in sound card and runs on an evaluation copy of windows 7. I used the optical out with my Ultra Micro DAC, but I noticed that the sound wasnt as good as with my older pc. I posted about it here but no one could agree on what the problem is, which is understandable I guess when you factor in how ridiculously complicated PC audio is.
I gave up on the problem and now the new PC never gets used anymore.

Anyhow, I was wondering if there is a fail safe method to get the absolute purest sound from any pc. I will willingly do whatever it takes
(even if it makes the computer essentially useless for every other purpose) so any suggestions would be appreciated.
I have looked at the M-audio USB transit and the M-audio sound cards.
I would buy either of these things if anyone could actually explain to me how they will help. People keep telling me that when it comes to optical, quality of components just doesnt matter. So wouldn't that sort of defeat the object of these.
I would also happily change operating systems, media players or any of my current software.
This is driving me nuts, any help will be greatly appreciated
Thanks

 

[Tyll Hertsens]

You're right, computers are very complicated and our expertise is in recommending headphones and constructing reliable hardware. Getting the bits to it in good order could be so many things, I'd suggest asking the questions over in the computer audio section, there's lots of very smart folks over there.

 

[plonter]

that's exactly the reason I use a cd player instead of my computer...which i would be very happy to use (much more comfortable and convinient),but it just sound very cold and bright compared to my marantz cd5001. I wonder which one is more accurate sounding though.. my older transport,a cheap pioneer dvd player sounded the same as the marantz so i guess the problem is with the computer. I even thought of getting another computer to use as a dedicated transport for music, but for now I am very happy with the sound coming out of my marantz+ultra micro stack.

 

[noparanoia]

Thanks for the reply guys. I know I can rely on the Headroom forum peeps to reply, that is why I posted here first. I made a new thread in the computer audio forum but, as I suspected, it suffered from lack of interest and has died (70 views, 0 replys). Oh well. Hey plonter we have almost identical kit

You have the astrodynes though; I am thinking of getting those when I have some money. How do you rate yours?...