USB audio DAQ

I have a pair of Rose Wood speakers with a pre amp but would like to hook it up to my laptop. Does anyone have any recommendations of a good USB soundcard DAQ that they use for driving bookshelf speakers?

Can't you just use the laptop's headphone jack to run a line to the pre-amp? Forgive me if any lack of knowledge is making me miss something obvious.

http://emotiva.com/products/dacs/dacs/little-ego

I have an emotiva xd-1 that i drive via fibre optic from my mac mini. They just released two usb dacs.

Can't you just use the laptop's headphone jack to run a line to the pre-amp? Forgive me if any lack of knowledge is making me miss something obvious.

You can. Quality may not be too good.

dac… not daq.

Can't you just use the laptop's headphone jack to run a line to the pre-amp? Forgive me if any lack of knowledge is making me miss something obvious.

The idea of the dac (digital analog converter) is to perform the actual digital -[HTML_REMOVED] analog conversion itself. If you run the laptop line out -[HTML_REMOVED] amp, the laptop is still converting the digital signal to an analog signal, then your amp is just amplifying that. Depending on laptop, and headphones/speakers, it can be anywhere from a barely noticeable improvement, to a major jump in quality.

I run one of these little things to drive some headphones… http://www.fiio.net/en/products/27

pretty cheap, sounds good, and has a line out.

Are you going to hook the dac upto an amplifier? Or do you need something with power to actually drive the speakers?

For best selection of USB DACs in all price ranges, just go to the Headphone Bar.

http://www.headphonebar.com/

They're in the middle of moving to a new location and won't be open for another week or so, but their online store is still open.

interesting

I used to consider myself a bit of an audiophile, and was rather picky about things. Lately I have read a number of studies to show that most of it is just faff.

Blind test have shown that the most expensive DACs in the world cannot be reliably identified in blind test over the stock standard run of the mill stuff. The key is that levels must be matched. So when I used to think my outboard DAC was better than my inboard one, it was because it was louder. Unless there is something totally wrong with your inboard DAC, which is not out of the realm of possibility, it will likely sound as good as something costing two grand or more. Line out headphone jack should be just fine. And as long as you run the volume at 100% on your laptop and turn off windows system sounds, your CPU should not modify the signal at all to mix in other sounds.

It's also been proven that cheap amplifiers are just as good as expensive ones, as long as you have enough power to run at the volume you want. Someone's had a $10K reward for something like 30 years for anyone that can reliably identify one amplifier over another, and nobody has been able to do so. Again, the key here is that they must be level matched, and neither amp can be driven until clipping. The only reason to spend more money on an amplifier is to have more power, so you can play louder without clipping. (some amps sound better when clipping than others do when clipping. But no amplifier that's not clipping will sound better than another that is also not clipping provided they are at the same volume level .) What a shock it was to me, who thought I could do this. But not. one. person. ever. has been able to so for a $10K reward. http://tom-morrow-land.com/tests/ampchall/

Same story for HD vs CD. http://xiph.org/~xiphmont/demo/neil-young.html

There are 3 things that matter, and only 3.
1. The quality of the original recording/mastering. (Here's where some people mistakenly assume that 24/96 recordings are better than the CD… because the master is different)
2. Having enough power to play at the volume you want. Yes, this could mean you need a $2K amp, or maybe more if you want to really pump out the jams in a huge space, but generally a few hundred $$ will get you the highest of audio bliss at moderate volume for your living room.

Aaaand 3. The only place you should spend frivolous cash… your speakers (this includes subs). They are the only place that makes a difference should you satisfy 1 and 2.

If you made it this far… all I'm really saying is save the money on a DAC and spend it on speakers or a sub, or more power if you want it louder.

But tubes sound way better than silicon!

If you just want to get digital audio out of the laptop, maybe you can use the HDMI port (if it has one).

switch has a valid point re:HDMI. also works with spdif as most modern laptop headphone jacks have this built in.

as for laptop dac vs outboard. that's the biggest load of crap I've ever heard. the biggest thing I've noticed is the noise floor. being able to turn it up with getting all the noise with it. poorly wired laptop dacs also aren't shielded from the laptops power supply. and if you don't run your laptop though a power filter (which no one does). you get all sorts of crap coming out when your AC is plugged in.

also. the question of 'good' in audio is pretty subjective. but you can't say that the cheapest dac and the most expensive produce the same output at a critically sampled frequency. that said. given 44.1khz, it's more or less irrelevant, but to say they are all the same??

I use a Behringer UCA222 - cost $35 at Tom Lee - this into a Topping T-Class with some decent energy bookshelf speakers sounds pretty spectacular in my place :clap:. You can spend a lot of money for little improvement IMO.

The headphone output is not the way to do this! You'd have to be deaf not to hear the difference using USB DAC vs headphone jack.

And as long as you run the volume at 100% on your laptop and turn off windows system sounds, your CPU should not modify the signal at all to mix in other sounds.

Worst advice ever.

1) your headphone jack at 100% almost always produces a higher powered signal than a standard consumer line-level out… so if you're feeding that into an amp, don't put it at 100%

Nominal levels for line-level outs here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Line_level#Nominal_levels
for your laptop, reference your computer's spec sheets… should be there somewhere.

2) the cpu has nothing to do with the signal your DAC produces. Your dac is simply a clock saying, at this interval (frequency), turn this number between -1 and 1, into an electrical impulse. The accuracy of that process both the clock, and the conversion, ultimately decides the quality of the DAC.

It's also been proven that cheap amplifiers are just as good as expensive ones, as long as you have enough power to run at the volume you want.

Again, false.

I would argue the biggest different, like the dac, is the noise floor of a quality amplifier. Take a piece of crap, feed it a signal, and crank the volume. Chances are, the static volume will come along with the amplification of the sound. If you ever try building an amplifier, try using some cheap resistors, and capacitors… I'm sure you'll notice a difference. Also, most modern amps generally have a pre-amp as well which most definitely shape the sound… so a crappy pre-amp will generally produce less than ideal results.

If you wait to claim you used to be an audiophile, and now you don't give a shit. Go ahead. I'm not an audiophile, nor do I claim to be, but I happen to know a little about sound reproduction.

I use a Behringer UCA222 - cost $35 at Tom Lee - this into a Topping T-Class with some decent energy bookshelf speakers sounds pretty spectacular in my place :clap:. You can spend a lot of money for little improvement IMO.

Just finished building another class T for a little sound system in the kitchen. Sounds great. Some good advice here for a cheap setup.

Just finished building another class T for a little sound system in the kitchen. Sounds great. Some good advice here for a cheap setup.

I love T amps. I have a beautiful working carver amp from the 80's that sound incredible but my little 50 dollar t amp still sound better at near audio levels.

I also have dac from the same company INdeed Hifi on ebay also around 50 $ that sounds superb(has opticial input and output .

I have two 2x30 watt T amps stack with the dac running the audio for my Appletv and my led tv.

They are powering vintage minimus 7 speakers that I put crossovers tuned for the these speakers, dynamat and refoamed rubber surrounds myself.

Sounds crystal spectacular clear. A real joy to list to.