Replacement soundcard (or maybe a DAC)

[corkdood]

My soundcard has given up the ghost so I'm looking for a replacement. I have ripped my cds to an external hard drive in wav format so obviously I want to be able to play the wavs and get the music from the hard drive into my amp. I am aware that most soundcards do not offer the best in audio quality as the interference that is present in the average pc can cause problems. Perhaps an external DAC is what I need. Ideally if the dac could connect to a usb port on the computer that would be great. Any recommendations

 

[PJPro]

I use a Beresford DAC. This requires a soundcard which has an optical output. It doesn't have to be fancy or expensive. I happen to use the Creative SB X-Fi Xtreme Gamer. The DAC aslo doubles as a headphone amp.

 

[Anonymous]

If it's a Tower PC then an M-Audio 2496 is hard to beat at any price, if not an M-Audio Transit. Both are about £50 from companies like Dolphin Music and both are better than quite a few expensive CD players, presumably because the Pro audio side is much bigger and they are from a large and successful company.

Ash

 

[fr0g]

Agreed. The Audiophile 2496 is a fantastic soundcard. The improvement I got over an older Creative Audigy was night and day.(That was a more expensive card too). The card also has a coaxial SPDIF out if you want to add a DAC leter.

 

[Alec]

Anyone have an opinon on the M-Audio Audiophile 192?