How many people use DACS instead of soundcards?

.. and the + version. swish! You have to let us know how you get on with it. I just can't stretch that far, I'm still considering the regular one, though.
 
intruder369 said:
Well not being funny chaps I have never heard of one of these DACS before, and after reading all the posts here about it and looking at the V-DAC itself I would not touch it with a barge pole. I can only presume this is for stereo only, and judging by it's connections you have got to be joking. No HDMI omg and people are paying 150 bucks for this so called box. No I can honestly say that you do not get a lot for your buck here.

I suppose if your into stereo then it's OK, but for me I am into HD uncompressed formats and very much 5.1 and 7.1 and will stick with the Asus Xonar HDAV 1.3 Delux Soundcard. It may cost more than this, but you get a lot more for your money, and it as far better connections on it that what I can see on this thing that looks like something Tandy's threw up years ago.
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You're not really sure what you're talking about, are you?
 
Surely using outboard DACs with onboard sound systems is an exercise in fultility, considering that pretty much every onboard solution still like to adhere to the AC97 standard of using 16bit/48khz as the standard bit depth and sampling frequency upon which they work from.
Using S/PDIF is also a moot point considering that is last in the chain, especially with onboard AC97 aware solutions.

I'm running both onboard for gaming, and an XFI (Yeah, it ain't a MOTU or other such audiophile card, so shoot me! ;)) for true bit-for-bit passthrough to the S/PDIF... I could never get true bit-for-bit output from the onboard regardless of what I tried.
 
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BloodyL said:
Surely using outboard DACs with onboard sound systems is an exercise in fultility, considering that pretty much every onboard solution still like to adhere to the AC97 standard of using 16bit/48khz as the standard bit depth and sampling frequency upon which they work from.
Using SP/DIF is also a moot point considering that is last in the chain, especially with onboard AC97 aware solutions.

I'm running both onboard for gaming, and an XFI for true bit-for-bit passthrough to the SPDIF... I could never get true bit-for-bit output from the onboard regardless of what I tried.
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a lot of people like myself soon will use usb to output the digital stream at up to 96khz.
 
simply using ASIO and then the onboard spdif works fine.
there's nothing stopping you from getting a pure bitstream 96kHz out from onboard.

Using a soundcard + dac out is pointless and a waste of money IMO.
 
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Unless you use the soundcard for gaming/movies etc. in dolby headphone/cmss3d mode, and use the dac when you want to listen to music :)
 
BloodyL said:
Surely using outboard DACs with onboard sound systems is an exercise in fultility, considering that pretty much every onboard solution still like to adhere to the AC97 standard of using 16bit/48khz as the standard bit depth and sampling frequency upon which they work from.
Using S/PDIF is also a moot point considering that is last in the chain, especially with onboard AC97 aware solutions.

I'm running both onboard for gaming, and an XFI (Yeah, it ain't a MOTU or other such audiophile card, so shoot me! ;)) for true bit-for-bit passthrough to the S/PDIF... I could never get true bit-for-bit output from the onboard regardless of what I tried.
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Onboard sound has come along way since then!!! This might have been true a few years back but certainly not now.
 
This is destroying my soul. I've got a £200 budget(I would rather land in the 150 region) and the more I read the less I know.

The amount of choice and varying opinion in this area is bonkers. I've definitely come to take what I read on audiophile related forums with a pinch of salt and that 90% of the time you might aswell be reading the back of a box of Sugar Puffs.
 
TheBiznes said:
Trust your ears if you are buying try and see if someone will let you demo a dac. I love my MF Dac, but there are many others.
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I live in the middle of nowhere(yeah, I should probably sort that), so it's a case of try and absorb information then buy and sell at a loss till you get it right. I would rather do less of the selling at a loss.

I'm now thinking about saving a bit more and getting the new Arcam rDAC. But that of course means I have to hack and slash my way through a new price bracket before I hit the buy button.
 
I have a DacMagic, connected to NAD C352 amp and Monitor Audio RS6 speakers. The DAC was a noticeable improvement over my Creative X-Fi, but it's not night and day. Whether it's worth £200 is IMO borderline - perhaps my amp and speakers aren't good enough for the DAC to show its full worth. Nicely-made bit of kit, though! :p

TheBiznes said:
I also use Foobar and Wassapi for bit perfect playback of all my flac files the sound is amazing.
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I've tried that a couple of times, but have never been able to hear a difference next to Apple Lossless files through plain iTunes. Theoretically there must be an improvement, but iTunes integrates nicely with my iPhone and I can't hear anything to draw me away from it!
 
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Mattus said:
I have a DacMagic, connected to NAD C352 amp and Monitor Audio RS6 speakers. The DAC was a noticeable improvement over my Creative X-Fi, but it's not night and day. Whether it's worth £200 is IMO borderline - perhaps my amp and speakers aren't good enough for the DAC to show its full worth. Nicely-made bit of kit, though! :p
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This is what is worrying me. A dacmagic is worth about £230 sheets and all it does is convert digital to analogue, you would expect it to monster an internal card that is built to do all kinds of rubbish at half the price. The silver dacmagic would look amazing next to my A5 amp, but I'm not building a showroom for people interested in tricks of the mind.



Mattus said:
I've tried that a couple of times, but have never been able to hear a difference next to Apple Lossless files through plain iTunes. Theoretically there must be an improvement, but iTunes integrates nicely with my iPhone and I can't hear anything to draw me away from it!
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I've this to look forward to, messing about with wasapi and asio4all and the like for probably nothing.

I'm not completely against sinking loads cash into your sound gear, good headphones and headamps, speakers and stereo amps, these all bring very large differences and there is no room for doubt(until you get into the thousands and thousands of pounds for a 1% increase area). I get that it's a hobby for some people and if I had that kind of money, I would spend 20k on some amazing looking cables, but I would be quite aware that post a solid build and competent design, it would all be aesthetic and extra stroke factor.

I'm still in the market for a fancy silver core 3.5mm to 3.5mm cable with clear shielding with a budget of about £50 for something about 3cm long, just to go between my headphone amp and portable. You could put any suitably built copper cable long enough to hang yourself in it's place and I wouldn't be able to tell the difference.
 
Mm. The thing with this audio gear is that it retains its value so well that I can convince myself that buying things isn't a mistake. The DacMagic hasn't changed my musical listening life, but it's worth more now than when I bought it - I'll take the modest increase in sound quality knowing that I can sell it at any time! One of the reasons why I weaned myself off buying graphics cards, etc. - they lose half their value before you get them home. A good DAC will probably always be a good DAC, though.
 
I've never heard of DACS before and I'm quite intrigued. I wonder if someone could give me some advice.

I've recently started using my onboard sound as my old X-Fi went kaput and to be honest I didn't really notice a drop in quality. I've got a pair of Sennheisser HD555s and Acoustic energy Aero 2.1 thingies. I listen to all my music through my PC, and most of it's ripped as VBR MP3s but more recently due to a new bigger hard drive I've started ripping as FLAC.

If I get myself some DACS am I going to hear much of a difference on the speakers I've got? What sort of price range do these things normally fall in? I listen to all my music through my PC and don't really use it for games so I don't mind spending a bit if I'm going to hear bit of an upgrade.

Also I have an XBox connected to my monitor via HDMI and with a somewhat complicated system connected from my monitor to my speakers so I don't have to have the PC turned on for the Xbox sound to work. Will I be able to do something Similar with a DACS?

I'm going to do a bit of research into these things but any advice now would be welcome.

Cheers
 
What are you using to power the headphones atm mate ? please tell me its not in the pc ?

ive got sennhieser hd600 .. also have the aego 2.1 as well .. aego in gf house now as its my 2nd base of operations .... if you going to use a dac you need the amp to back it up .... i bought the musical fidelity v-dac .. had it p[lug into my cheap yam av amp .. nice jump in sound performance from just plugging the headphones into pc .... then bought a nad 315bee amp ( as i also have mission 780se speakers ) .. this bost the sound quality even further ...

if your going the dac route , the aegos will be the weak point... they are great plugged in for general pc hifi use .. but if your using the senns , then you will need a better amp
 
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