DAC for PC audio with an M-Audio 2496

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I recently upgraded the soundcard on my pc to an M-Audio 2496. My music is ripped to wav on an external hardcard so the upgrade has produced a nice improvement. Now I'm thinking of taking things a stage further and going for an external DAC. Is this worth the upgrade? I have read good things about the Beresford DAC. Just wanted to know what others think and if the DAc will make much difference.

I also heard that winamp gives better playback than windows media player on XP and older OS's Is this true?

 

[fr0g]

thejuggler:
I recently upgraded the soundcard on my pc to an M-Audio 2496. My music is ripped to wav on an external hardcard so the upgrade has produced a nice improvement. Now I'm thinking of taking things a stage further and going for an external DAC. Is this worth the upgrade? I have read good things about the Beresford DAC. Just wanted to know what others think and if the DAc will make much difference.

I also heard that winamp gives better playback than windows media player on XP and older OS's Is this true?

It might help, but that soundcard, as you have found, is already very impressive. I would perhaps email Stanley Beresford, and ask if you can return it if no improvement is found.

My guess is thatyou will get a nice boost though. My Beresford DAC is permanently attached to my laptop for the moment.

A quick check on his ebay site and he does indeed offer money back if not satisfied...

As for Winamp / WMP
It can give better playback, but not without tweaks. You need to download Asio4All and the Asio plugin for Winamp. This does indeed give a slight boost in clarity...

(And it works with Vista too)

*On a side note... Ripping to WAV is unnecessary, and as you will have found means that no tags can be stored... Lossless formats such as FLAC will give you exactly the same sonic results, save you 50% the space, and enable tagging. Plus, you can always retrieve the WAV back if you need it, or transcode to another format.