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Topic: External DAC with a PC transport (Read 2140 times) previous topic - next topic
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External DAC with a PC transport

Is it possible to use an external DAC instead of an analog sound card?
Can I output a digital audio signal (PCM I suppose) to a digital output integrated on the Motherboard (Asus P4C800 Deluxe, S/PDIF out) and hook it up to an external DAC and from there to the amp?

What I want basically is to decode an audio file (MPC, FLAC or any other compressed audio format) into a digitally encoded PCM and then feed this into an external DAC.
Can this be done?
What kind of hardware is recommended?
Is there any difference between using the digital Cox found on the board and using a better sound card, considering D/A is done on the external DAC?
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External DAC with a PC transport

Reply #1 –
Can this be done?

Yes - I have such a setup.


What kind of hardware is recommended?

A good external DAC and a sound card/main board with digital out. You probably want a sound adapter with good drivers and possible a non-resampling sound card, i.e. a card based on the cheap CMI 8738 chip. You might already have this on your asus board. If you have a sound card that upsamples everything to 48 kHz, make foobard2000 or winamp upsample for you for improved quality.


Is there any difference between using the digital Cox found on the board and using a better sound card, considering D/A is done on the external DAC?

The sound card on the main board might not be a particular good one. It might also do funny stuff. My intel board has an intel on-board sound card. It cuts the signal when there is nothing playing. This makes the DAC click whenever I press pause/play.