Meridian Unplugged - Powered by MrTechGuy.co.uk Forums Thread Like Summary - PC/Laptop USB Audio to SPDiF Out device Suggestion

Hi,

I would like to get good quality audio out from either my PC or Laptop. I'm currently using the optical out from my PC mother board to an optical to coax converter and then into my DSP loudspeakers.

What I would like is higher quality. I believe you can get better by having a USB card outputting to optical. Is this the case and if so are there any recommended devices? I'm open to suggestions.

Atm my PC is loud am having had to use my laptop recently via HDMI, it felt better with less ambient noise when the PC was off.

I very rarely have time for music these days, and so I use my PC connected as described previously to the DSP loudspeakers and TV. While it’s been good, I'd love to find more quality. One day when I get time I would like to refresh the caps in the DSP's too.

Alternative suggestions are welcome too.

FWIW, a little follow up: as the buyer of Steve’s 518, and the owner of more sources/systems than any sane person should really have, I bought a D10, a D10s and a D30 that were going cheap to give them a spin (on the man maths basis that I could move them on for much the same price if I didn’t like them/‘need’ them).

Seriously, or at least seriously enough to placate ‘er indoors, they are actually necessary as I have acquired two pairs of DSP33s for non-critical listening in our second home and I was planning on running laptop or HTPC signals through them directly into the coaxes on the rears. I also want a one box (D30) solution to the television/music requirements on the old DSP7000s where I can run coax from the DVD/CD and optical from the telly. That, or I use one or two of the 500 series boxes I have acquired.

As a little aspect of this project, I have spent the last few days resuscitating and then stress testing a 2011 Mac Mini by running Swinsian bitperfectly all day on it and through the DACs into an old but recently serviced Quad 44/405.2 combination and thence modest Dali bookshelf speakers. The Quad combo is perfect and non-stressful for day-long listening while I was working, so I was quite content.

I was impressed. Most material was simple red book level FLAC, because that’s what I have, but I included some DSD stuff just to see what the DACs could do. It’s worth reporting that there is an extremely irritating ground loop hum on my amp but that might be an artefact of 80s British manufacturing standards rather than a general issue. If it is a issue, you can cure it, at least in the case of the Mac, by using a toslink mini adaptor in the Mac’s headphone jack to make a toslink connection to something like the D30 that happily allows three distinct methods of input, unlike the D10s.

The results are, to my ears, stunning for the money for all three, albeit with the relatively modest (but decent enough) kit I was using. Interestingly, however, when I was at my holiday home over the weekend, I gave the D10s a go with an old MacBook and the results (although in no way a controlled or scientific test) were at least as good as when I fed the laptop’s signal through the Aurorasound version of the Hiface I mentioned earlier in the thread into the really very decent internal DAC in an old, but many times more expensive, Krell Audio + Video Standard processor. Both signals went to a Krell KAV500 power amp behemoth and Sonus Faber floorstanders, so even with not so shabby kit to try the DACs out on, the Toppings held their own. As Steve said, there was good imaging and depth. I was certainly getting more information from tracks I thought I knew well, and there wasn’t that wearing brightness or ‘glare’ that certain DACs seem to have, especially when listening for a duration. I’m certainly converted; I had the ifi DAC I mentioned earlier to hand and it gives appreciably less depth and detail than any of the Toppings, although not poor by any stretch and it still does have the bonus of being battery powered and having a headphone jack.

The D10s to me probably sits at the best nexus of price and quality, but I’m happy enough to keep all three. They are more than good enough for my purposes.

For further experimentation, I may either rely on a small passive preamp or forsake a preamp and bit perfection altogether and use variable volume control through the software. I have experienced the Leedh software preamp on Lumin stuff and quite like it and, given the amount of monkeying around that M does in the digital domain, I can hardly object on principle. I understand that Audirvana does something similar to Leedh.

Then, of course, I also need to set up the DSP33s, once the reset plug arrives.

Anyway, another perspective.

I have purchased a WiiM Pro Plus Audio Network Bridge and it is working flawlessly streaming from my iMac to the 861 by coax at 16/44 with MHR at 88.
Brilliant solution at less than £150.