USB digital signal directly to Cambridge Amp

[Red Dragon]

I have a Cambridge 640R amp connected to my pc with a mini jack input and phono cables to play my iTunes stored in an external hard-drive. I have recently ordered a TerraTec Aureon Dual USB sound card devise that converts my USB output to an optical output so that I can connect an optical cable directly to my amp.

The advantage I am hoping, is that I can have the fantastic Cambridge onboard DAC's do the decoding of my music files...but I am suddenly having doubts...will the Cambridge be able to deal with a digital signal and play my audio files or does it have to go through some sort of external decoding ( like in the Iomega media player that I have; but find it very awkward and slow to access music files, but great for movies...?)

I really hope that I can feed the digital signal directly to the amp as the audio quality I know will be much better than that served up by my own PC. Any assistance or advise would be greatly appreciated as this digital streaming side of things is fairly new to me...

thanks alot...

 

[Red Dragon]

C'mon guys, I know someone out there knows the answer to this...can the built in DAC's in the 640R AV amp decode the digital music files fed directly to it from my PC ?!

Help, please...!!

 

[daveh75]

Try having a little patience...It's a sunday night and you only posted half hour ago!

But yes, your 640R will decode the digital signal

 

[Red Dragon]

Thanks Dave, that's all I wanted to know...

 

[iMark]

Your heading is a bit misleading. You don't want to feed USB to your amp but an optical signal. As long as your soundcard produces a decent optical signal your amp will be able to deal with the signal.

 

[Red Dragon]

iMark:Your heading is a bit misleading. You don't want to feed USB to your amp but an optical signal. As long as your soundcard produces a decent optical signal your amp will be able to deal with the signal.

The PC has USB outputs only so the gizmo adaptor I mentioned converts it to an optical output, so I do want to transfer a digital USB signal via optical cable to my amp...?

I'm not sure as yet how good a signal is produced via the USB as I have been using the mini jack output to my amp so far...we will see ?

 

[iMark]

Thanks for your clarification. Your PC doesn't have digital out so you want to buy a USB box to convert the signal from USB to optical with a dedicated box.

Your amp won't be able to deal with a USB signal because it doesn't have USB in but will be able to deal with optical in. You're looking at the following setup:

PC USB out -> USB to optical converter box -> optical in amp

If you're PC is on a wireless network you could consider an Apple Airport Express. That way you could stream wirelessly from your PC to your amp. One way to do this is to make the Airport Express join the present network. You could also wire the Airport Express to your router through ethernet if you don't have a wireless network.

 

[Red Dragon]

iMark:
Thanks for your clarification. Your PC doesn't have digital out so you want to buy a USB box to convert the signal from USB to optical with a dedicated box.

Your amp won't be able to deal with a USB signal because it doesn't have USB in but will be able to deal with optical in. You're looking at the following setup:

PC USB out -> USB to optical converter box -> optical in amp

If you're PC is on a wireless network you could consider an Apple Airport Express. That way you could stream wirelessly from your PC to your amp. One way to do this is to make the Airport Express join the present network. You could also wire the Airport Express to your router through ethernet if you don't have a wireless network.

Thanks for that iMark, and if the optical cable works as expected I don't think i would be too bothered with an AAEx although I am a fan of iTunes and now Spotify, it isn't any inconvenience to run a cable to my amp from the PC (5m Optical Cable) so will probably stick with my current arrangement for the time being anyway...

 

[iMark]

No problem. I didn't know how far away your PC was from the amp so I thought of a wireless solution.

A 5m cable should work fine.

The converter box gets quite good reviews. Best of luck with your setup.