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The Quest for Better PC Audio (HiFi)... need some suggeestions

Posted by ZenGuy (A) on April 6, 2005 at 10:15:13

I'm looking to improve my pc based audio system and need some suggestions.

What I have right now is a EMU 1212M sound card - feeding the digital out - into a Monarcy DIP Classic - into a Monarchy DIP Upsampler - into a Ack! DAC. The DIPs, in theory, clean up the digital out of the EMU sound card. This is about $1,200 worth of equipment.

I've got a decent Hafler pre-amp and a VTL-ST85 power amp... speakers are Von Schweikert VR1s. I'm very happy with the amp and the speakers and don't want to change them. I am also happy with the various speaker wires and interconnects that I have...

Here's the problem, the above-described digital setup (you know the $1,000 worth) doesn't really sound appreciably better to me than using the audio out of the EMU 1212M. I know the EMU has decent digital to analog conversion, but it still seems to me that $1,000 should get me some improvement.

I'm using my computer more and more as the centerpiece of my audio system, and so I'd like that to be as high quality as is reasonably possible. So, for $500 to $1,500 I'd like to see if I can up it to another level.

Here are a couple of the things I've considered:

1. Sell the DIPS and the Ack DAC and buy a Lynxx II sound card - the audio out on those cards is supposed to be excellent...

2. Sell the DIPS (or maybe sell one and keep one - don't really need the upsampler if I do this option) and the Ack DAC and by a Benchmark DAC1..

3. ????????

Any suggestions would be greatly appreciated.

By the way, I've also gone the way of the USB sound card (M Audio Transit) that actually sounded worse to me than my current setup. I've also got a Delta 1010 Sound Card, which pretty much sounds about the same as the EMU for audio out, though its digital out is not as good.

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