stand alone DAC or amp with integrated?

[nkitsell]

My main source for music is my PC, I do have a soundcard (Asus Xonar DG), currently got that going into a JVC A-X30 amp which is playing through a pair of Linn index speakers. I want to upgrade, not massively though (I'm poor). I love the speakers, don't want to replace them yet, but the amp is old and slowly dying, and I'm wondering if an external DAC will be better than my soundcard.

First question: will I see a notable difference in sound quality? Most of my music collection is mp3 format between 256-320 kbps. I bought the soundcard because at the time of building my pc it had good reviews and was very reasonably priced - will an external DAC be a big improvement?

Second question: Dedicated DAC or integrated DAC+amp? I'm thinking Audio quest dragonfly v1.2 or the HRT microstreamer? Or perhaps the Marantz PM6005 or the Monitor Audio Airstream A100? I'm leaning toward the monitor audio simply because it's 50 wpc and I've read online that the Linn Index speakers I have might sound better with this power behind them (as opposed to the 30 wpc my current amp is or the 40 wpc the Marantz is). All these products have a 5 star rating from whathifi.....

The ASUS soundcard does have an optical output since the marantz doesn't have USB input, and I think the USB input on the monitor audio is only for ipods anyway so I'd probably be using optical for that too...

My current amp, the JVC, is also on its way out - 2 of the 3 inputs are now unusable, so if I'm going to end up replacing this in the not too distant future, I may as well get an amp with a built in DAC and kill two birds with one stone right??

 

[SteveR750]

Sounds like the Marantz using the toslink connection would work fine and possibly be the cheapest option. I wouldn't worry about the 10W difference between the Marantz and the Pioneer amps. I'm sure I've read that the Asus soundcard is pretty decent, so you won't get night and day improvements, the biggest external influence is the windows kernel mixer and associated resampling. Unfortunately that's media player dependant, and Spotify cannot be configured for exclusive use of the output device, so it's not worth spending a lot on a Spotify based system.

 

[nkitsell]

The software I'm using for playback is Mediamonkey gold v4, I'm not a fan of itunes or spotify. Did think about getting Tidal, rather than buying all my music again to get lossless but right now I just don't want to be paying to listen to music I already own haha. So really I'm looking to get the best playback out of the mp3s I have, and it seemed a DAC was the best way to do that, and since my amp seems to be on it's way out I figured integrated might be the way to go. So you would recommend the marantz?

 

[SteveR750]

I haven't heard the Marantz, but based upon your needs and the shortlies, it's the one I'd go for, if only because it's going to be the cheapest / best value.

 

[nkitsell]

Thanks for your help