Motherboard to Dac???

[bobchiba]

I am about to build a new computer which has optical and coax digital outs. In a perfect world I'd have a sqeezebox but got no money left after this build.

My question is can I go from a digital out on my motherboard into my Arcam black box DAC and give it a nice 44.1khz 16bit signal as per my Flac music collection?

......

 

[pete321]

Yes, but you'll have to change the sound output manually to 16/44 in Windows. The better option when not using Windows Media Center, is to install Foobar2000 with the WASAPI plugin and get bit perfect playback. I generally use the latter and the difference in sound quality between that and WMP is quite a big leap, more clarity and detail.

 

[bobchiba]

Thanks for your reply.

So I take it I want to avoid any software along the way tryin to re-sample it. I've used various medial players before, currenlty using MediaMonkey but not particularly attatched to it (anything but itunes ands media player!), what does the WASAPI plugin do technically speaking? Do any other media players support it?

 

[Anonymous]

You could carry on using Media Monkey, and use ASIO for bit Perfect output. Media Monkey does not support WASAPI to the best of my knowledge.

Cheers Craig