[Desdinova12]

My 3.5mm to 1/4in adapter broke last night. I currently use the Xonar Essence STX and run it to my Valhalla 2. Right now, running RCA cables from the speaker output to the amp sounds okay, and has cleaned up a lot of boise coming from my GPU. Is this going to do anything negative to the signal?

 

[MindsMirror]

What were you using the 1/4" adapter for? Connecting headphones directly to the STX headphone out? STX RCA output to the Valhalla is the optimal way to utilize the hardware you have.

 

[Desdinova12]

It was from the headphone out on the STX to teh Valhalla's input. Now it's just a direct RCA line fromt he speaker output to the Valhalla. So form HP out to RCA in, from RCA out to RCA in

 

[MindsMirror]

Connecting the STX headphone output to the Valhalla results in double amping. The headphone amp in the STX is in the signal path but serves no purpose since the Valhalla is the one driving the headphone. All the STX's amp does in that situation is add some noise and distortion. The RCA output comes straight from the DAC without the headphone amp in the chain, which is what you want when you're using an external amp.

 

[Desdinova12]

Is that why I got so much extra noise from the other parts in my system?

 

[MindsMirror]

I'm not sure, If your other components are causing noise I expect that would affect the RCA output also, not just the headphone amp.

Do you have your STX, OS, and software volumes all at 100%? Do that and use the Valhalla's volume knob to set the level, that should give you the best signal to noise ratio. If you still have noise then, you probably need an external DAC that's not on the same supply as your PC in order to eliminate it.