Hi all,

I saw lots of ppl using DAC recently instead of sound card. They claim that DAC can out perform any good soundcard in the market. Is that true? What are the differences between soundcard and DAC?

Are the differences very obvious when pair with speakers like Aego M, MX5021 or Edifier S530d?

Please advise.

i think i have answered this b4, a DAC doesn't slot onto your PC Motherboard and doesn't have a USB (well some does). But basically they does the same thing, which is to convert sound from Digital to Analog to be feed to your amp.

Yes a dedicated DAC should performs better as you can isolate the power supply to draw from a power bank which is alot less distortion and noise, while the soundcard has to draw the power from the power supply/mobo which is prone to ripple and noise injected to the power.

edit: no i don't suppose you'll hear much difference on normal speakers, you need hifi where the source, pre-amp, amp's power are isolated to fully utilised the DAC. In those setup, even different RCA cables gives different results

This post has been edited by vincent_audio: Mar 24 2008, 04:27 PM

Oh really? I din see any thread explaining this. Sorry for making you to explain again.

I saw some many LYN members are selling DAC like Yulong, Zero, iBasso. What about those DAC? They have USB connection as well. What are those USB connection for if DAC is connected to its own power supply. Some DAC has amp in it as well right? I am a noob in these stuffs. Get really confused reading those threads sometimes

How do you define normal speakers?? Speakers like Aego M, MX5021, are those normal to you?

I am planning to upgrade my speaker( eg Aego M, MX5021) but dun noe whether should I buy a good soundcard or a budget DAC around RM400-600 I guess.

So need some experts to give me some opinions.

I use my PC audio system more for movies/TV Shows/animes than music and games.

Soundcard itself is a DAC. Why people using external DAC is to get better audio, since the uses of switching PSU makes it noisy, and I don't mean fan noise

If you uses standard multimedia PC speaker, it wasn't necessary. Any good soundacrd will do, even modern onboard sound should suffice. Those brand you mention is just standard multimedia PC speaker, only AegoM is more suitable for music listening

The USB connection is just mere connection to the PC, as it allows the PC to 'see' that it connected and transfering digital audio data, not supplying power

A good soundcard like Audiotrak Prodigy HD2 would suffice for music

The USB connected is just like a transport interface, it act like a medium to receive signal from computer, it's the normal 3.5mm stereo, RCA, coaxial, all of them are designed to receive signal from one end and then transfer to the other end.

Since you mainly use your PC audio system fro movie/TV Shows/Animes, i guess it's sufficient for you to stick with max MX5021(good for movie, my GF owned this) and normal Creative soundcard, anything spent more than that it's kinda wasted

@GodLuvSxS
@Najmods

Thanks for your advice and explanation. In this case what kind of sound card should I go for? There are many types in the market.

One more thing, this is abit out of the topic. Since u all say that DAC is for Hi-Fi system. Are AV receiver a high end DAC? As I am planning to get a Hi-Fi system end of this year.

AV receiver is amplifier, it receive signal from source and then amplify it. May I know what kind of Hi-Fi system you trying to get? Like those Sony dunno how many k watt combo type? or normal separate like AE? And your purpose of getting this is for movie purpose?

actually those 'duno how many kilo watt' sony,pionerr,etc if compare with speaker such as aego m ,edifier s530d, which will better ? will higher end multimedia speaker better than these 'hi-fi' ?

If you're serious about music, get a stand-alone DAC then, if what you mainly do is watching movie only. A decent soundcard should suffice. Unless you're into home theatre....

This post has been edited by Sieg: Mar 24 2008, 07:54 PM

Actually, I have already a set of Philip Home Theatre set model HT3110. It is brand new, win it in a golf competition. So I am wondering should I get a AC receiver to boost the system. However, I do wana to buy a good receiver so that it can be reused when I upgrade my system in the future.

What kind of AV receiver should I get? Budget around 1K - 3K for AV receiver.

the technical spec for the HT set is http://www.p4c.philips.com/files/h/hts3110..._98_pss_aen.pdf.

---

Added on March 24, 2008, 8:16 pmI mainly used it for watching movie only. Yeah many of them just advise to buy a better speaker and a soundcard will be sufficient.

But what kind of sound card should I buy which is good for movies, gaming and music? There are too many choices iin the market. Budget for sound card probably around RM300++



This post has been edited by naleh33: Mar 24 2008, 08:16 PM

IMHo. those speaker are budget active speaker, with some quality.
from what you were going to use. i will suggest you to spend money on MX5021, and get a normal sound card like audigy2. that's more than enough for movie / tvshow / animes.

for music, i will recommend you go for stand alone DAC, and Aego M.

AV receiver means three things:

1) It's an integrated amp
2) With a tuner
3) That has theatre sound decoding

Those AV amps without tuners are called AV amplifiers.

DACs are usually built into digital audio and video players, so that they can convert the digital signal from the discs into analogue (hence: Digital-to-Analogue Converter). AV Receivers/Amps OTOH have a built-in DAC that converts and separates the audio channels necessary for surround theatre.

If you want to use the DAC that's built into a receiver, you'll need an optical cable, and a disc player with the same type of output. You wouldn't be able to access the receiver's DAC if you used RCA cables. If you have a high end disc player paired to a so-so receiver, you'll be better off using analogue RCAs, cos chances are the DAC in the player is better than the one in the receiver.

OTOH if you had a high-end receiver and a so-so player but with optical out, then use the DAC of the receiver which will give you better sound quality. However, IINM if you want dts decoding for theatre surround you will need to use the optical cable.

IMHO a separate DAC is usually one of the last things to consider even in a moderately high end system; you'll be better off dealing with the acoustical bottlenecks elsewhere like the player, amp, speakers, cables and room acoustics. Only after you've done all that and spent a considerable amount of time listening to the system and tweaking it to the max, will you be able to discern subtle changes to the system, i.e., external DAC, separate transport, pre-power amp, tube amps, power supply etc.

If you plan to get a DAC for your PC, I'd say not needed, just get a reasonable sound card will do, cos the Aego M isn't that great for serious listening to begin with (I'm using them for my pc). Let's not forget also that the DVD writer/combo or whatever, is not meant for serious music so why waste good money on bad equipment? And we don't even need to talk about compressed music cos that's even worse

This post has been edited by gregy: Mar 24 2008, 10:15 PM

AV amp does not necessary comes with tuner.
AV amp is same with AV amplifiers. amp = amplifiers in short form.
AV amp means it support multi channel, and with selector (thats why they call it receiver some time). so that you can connect different DVD source, of image / audio. and it comes with multichannel surround support.
usually for higher end system. people take source into first count when they have a not bad amp and not bad speaker. else rubbish in rubbish out. and usually they opp for external DAC because of it's cheap price, to use the DAC with cheaper transporter. else CDP with the same DAC built in will cost much much higher.
other than that. high end DAC will indeed provide better quality than high end CDP as the DAC has it's own isolated power supply,.rather than sharing power with servo, lens, and other component in the CDP system.
there are some people prefer DAC also because the ease of upgrade. he just have to change the DAC. instead of the whole CDP which including transport and DAC

if you serious about music listening, aego m is hard to fight within budget of RM 1500 (which including speaker and amp)
DAC is a must for it if u want max quality.
i had heard some high end systems like sonus faber, wilson audio, ATC for quite some time. Lower Mid range systems like AE1 (Reference of AE) , which in fact i owned this speaker before or even epos that i am using now. and some lower entry hifi speaker such as NAD flood stander and B&W601.
i do think that soundcard will be bottle neck even if u are using it with aego m.
i had once heard AEGO M with Agile Audio CDP, paired with Cardas Gold Reference RCA-RCA cable.
the sound is truly immersing.

aego m has it's potential. only draw back is the bass provided by a single woofer. which causing it's mono bass situation. however, it does hit deep and punchy.
and the frequency cross over point is well defined and the satelite doesn't sound detached from the woofer bass.
it's a good plus imho.


and for your info,changes caused by external DAC, separate transport, pre-power amp, tube amps, power supply is not subtle, which in fact they bring MAJOR different. even in my lower mid range system. i upgraded my CDP, and they sound MUCH MUCH different, i upgrade my cable to van den hul, i change my AMP transformer, and power section cap. and it bring super big different. ask those who had listened to my system before and after.
my system had become much quiet than before as compare to the original condition.

if you were into DAC, i will suggest you to opp for DAC with coaxial input. most of my friends with DAC agreed with me that coaxial input sounds more natural than optical.
on their systems respectively.


This post has been edited by PcWork: Mar 24 2008, 10:32 PM

my EL34 valve amp is only rated at 20 watt, but is capable of powering floorstander speaker not even kilo watt

but my speaker are rated at 90db

gregy: i do not think DAC is the last thing you should consider as it is the 3rd item in the chain of the audio system, after the source and power. I do not believe you can get good sound if u have a bad source which normally has an integrated DAC. It's all depends on how good you want your system to sound like and of course how much difference you can hear.

lol. valve amp is different, the wattage can't be consider same as solid state.. audio research rated at 50-55 watt can drive sonus faber amati/ dynaudio floor stander.. imaging that?? that's super power hungry speaker....

my previous owned yulong T-amp solid state only rated at 9 watt. can power my NAD floorstander too. my floorstander also 90db. lol
and it power it LOUD. not only have sound, but LOUD, well define.. haha

After all those technical terms, I dunno whether he's confused or not
I hope he understands and ultimately, it goes to your budget and the purpose of usage. Don't get something which is useless to you.

well ya, that's the point i'm trying to tell, some of my friend has wat they call the first watt amp, rated at 1 amp powering high efficency speakers at 98db

it's the SQ, not the SPL that we are looking for. Those 1000 watt RMS is just marketing and looks cool on paper

alot of ppl is comparing, x brand got 100watt, y brand got 200 watt !!! y brand sure better

lol
those marketting guys never use RMS, they don't dare too.
hahaha
only super duper high end flagship amp will goes up to 500 watt RMS, or 1000 watt RMS.
those marketting ppl trying to use PMPO.
however. those wattage only shows how powerful it is, in the other word, how loud it is, aka SPL.
it's true that we are looking for SQ. even though it might not be loud, as long as it sound well define, well detail, not harsh, emotional, and relaxing. i will be the first one to buy the amp. =)



take a look at the size of the amp, to power the size of the speaker. lol
the smaller one is amp. the bigger one is CDP.


This post has been edited by PcWork: Mar 24 2008, 10:52 PM

Wah.... really information overflow... especially those electronic jargons that the experts used . I have to digest abit. But from those explanation, for me, I will just need a fairly well speaker and soundcard and it will do the job nicely

But really thank you for everyone information. It is really enlightening. Let me gain more knowledge on audiophille then I start playing with those gadgets.

at this moment, i really suggest u for altec lansing MX5021 (this model only, the upgraded version doesn't sound good to me)
and audigy2 ZS

Yeah I am considering Altec Lansing MX5021. But some ppl said that Edifier S530D is much better for movies. Even better than Aego M. But I will still go listen for myself to make up my mind. I heard that your DIY cables are very good. Will cables make a significant different if it is replaced with the stock cables?

But I think now is quite hard to get audigy2 ZS right? How much is the card?

This post has been edited by naleh33: Mar 24 2008, 11:46 PM

hi to all DAC sifu here..
plan to get an Aego M on my next upgrade.
i'm currently using Audiotrak Prodigy 7.1 HiFi..
my question is: does the worth to add another DAC [let's say ZERO DAC]??

from (1) Audiotrak Prodigy 7.1 HiFi -> Aego M
to (2) Audiotrak Prodigy 7.1 HiFi -> Zero DAC -> Aego M

or should i consider to sell the audiotrak and use the onboard optical connection instead?
(3) OnBoard -> Zero DAC -> Aego M

any difference between (2) and (3)??

can you eleborate more on the bold section? for all i know, the newer MX5021 satellite has a design that is different from the older ones. Do you mean this?

Before this, I did speak with mADmAN regarding the optical and coaxial connection to the ZERO dac, he tried connecting with onboard optical and Maya 44's coaxial, with his revealing Beyer DT990, the result comes out he cant detect any significant difference, or dare to say no different at all.

Anyway, I do think you should do a head to head comparison between the Prodigy and ZERO, they might be on similar level of sound quality but I always think DAC is a better form for source, cos it provides better modding possibility, room to improve the power supply chain which I rated most important and basic aspect in getting the right sound, and lastly DAC's high integrity would allows you move from PC hifi to Traditional Hifi without any setup hassle

[quote=PcWork,Mar 24 2008, 10:24 PM]
AV amp does not necessary comes with tuner.
AV amp is same with AV amplifiers. amp = amplifiers in short form.

Any amp that comes with a tuner is called a receiver. A one piece audio component with pre/power audio amplification stages is called an integrated amplifier. I was in hi-fi sales 18 yrs ago, so I had to learn the basics



AV amp means it support multi channel, and with selector (thats why they call it receiver some time). so that you can connect different DVD source, of image / audio. and it comes with multichannel surround support.

Here is something I found on http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AV_receiver

"The term receiver originally referred to a component which included a tuner, a pre-amplifier and a power amplifier. These receivers were sometimes called stereos. The modern AV receiver provides for these functions, but extends the amplification to more than two channels....."



and usually they opp for external DAC because of it's cheap price, to use the DAC with cheaper transporter. else CDP with the same DAC built in will cost much much higher.

Agreed somewhat, but what about the signal integrity from a cheapo player? Wouldn't the signal degrade from the point of the source? And what about jitter, wow and flutter? Here's a good post, taken from http://www.polkaudio.com/forums/showthread.php?t=3931

"This may be a little stretch but a transport would be kind of like a turntable without a cartridge. They came in all varieties. Cheap ones had more wow and flutter, ligher weight bases and less precision tone arms. If you put the same high quality cartridge in a cheap one vs a good one you could really tell the difference. You could stretch it a little further and compare the cartridge to the DAC. If the cartridge was a cheap one it probably wouldn't matter what the quality of the turntable but if it was a really good cartridge then quality of the table would make a big difference.
As far as a transport vs a using a CD player data output, they perform the same function. They both read the data off the disc and supply it to the DAC. Each byte is placed in three different places on the disc, is read 3 times then the DAC determines what the byte is. That way if it misses one due to a mis-read then it throws that one out. If it misses two then it makes a guess. Speed is not very important so long as it is fast enough and the average speed is correct so a buffer is not overrun. Jitter is an issue as well but I don't have a good handle on that. I think it has to do with the data timing changing mid byte and not matching what is expected by the DAC but I'm not really sure. If anyone knows let me know.
A transport that does not read well will miss a certain amout of data and will still sound good. The problem is when the DAC starts guessing about more and more bytes it will at some point no longer be accurate even though it is still playing. (a higher amount of bytes are in the "guess" state) So... there is a range of quality which produces a range of accuracy.
madmax"


Here's some more http://forum.audiogon.com/cgi-bin/fr.pl?dd...&openflup&5&4#5

Basically, like what you say, GIGO. However, GIGO starts at the very beginning of the audio repro stage, i.e, the reading of the disc So, IMHO, unless you have a pretty decent transport, it's better to get a good CDP like a Marantz or Onkyo at least. All I'm saying is, sometimes it's better to let the sound engineers who design excellent CDPs, do their mix and match for you. Choosing the right DAC is no easy task, each one adds its own flavoring to the end result. Let's say you have bright sounding speakers, coupled to an amp that sounds fast. Would you choose a bright but accurate DAC over a warmer, but less transparent one? The type of music one listens to plays a role too. And I think I was referring to using the DVD writer on a pc as a transport coupled to a DAC like what the TS was intending to use. I feel it is rather imbalanced.



other than that. high end DAC will indeed provide better quality than high end CDP as the DAC has it's own isolated power supply,.rather than sharing power with servo, lens, and other component in the CDP system.
there are some people prefer DAC also because the ease of upgrade. he just have to change the DAC. instead of the whole CDP which including transport and DAC


I don't think I'm wrong in playing down the use of an external DAC for TS. He wasn't referring to using a high end DAC anyway Granted, dedicated transport/DAC combos are great, but these are usually high end components with high end price tags.


and for your info,changes caused by external DAC, separate transport, pre-power amp, tube amps, power supply is not subtle, which in fact they bring MAJOR different. even in my lower mid range system. i upgraded my CDP, and they sound MUCH MUCH different, i upgrade my cable to van den hul, i change my AMP transformer, and power section cap. and it bring super big different. ask those who had listened to my system before and after.
my system had become much quiet than before as compare to the original condition.


Ok, the sum is greater than the parts I agree. But let's say you changed them one at a time, the differences would have been more subtle wouldn't they?


if you were into DAC, i will suggest you to opp for DAC with coaxial input. most of my friends with DAC agreed with me that coaxial input sounds more natural than optical.
on their systems respectively.

The whole world is still debating this one There doesn't seem to be a clear winner, a quick check on audio forums prove that after so many decades of audio technology no one has been able to come up with a definitive answer. Bad coaxials may pick up EMF. Bad opticals may bend easily or their Toslinks are loose etc. But for brevity and simplicity I think perhaps coaxials are easier to get right; an optical solution would require a good optical/digital converter at both ends, so on cheapo systems with bad converters there might be an issue that affects sound quality.