UCD180 balanced via soundcard

[mlihl]

Hi,

I plan to build UCD180 monoblocks that would be driven balanced via an RME or ESI Julia soundcard. Anyone tried this before?

I want to avoid a preamp and control volume only via software.

Regards,

Mike

[BWRX]

Surely someone has, but even if they don't chime in you should be fine.

[lucpes]

Used an EMU 1212m for this purpose, works like a charm...

[mlihl]

How was the sound via the 1212M?

[PigletsDad]

The downside of this approach is that you reduce DAC resolution at anything other than full volume. To take any extreme example, say you want or need to listen at -90dB. This corresponds to losing 15bits of resolution. On a 16bit sound card, you are down to 1 bit conversion, and even a 24bit one only has 9bits active. Of course, this should be very quite, so may be it is not a problem.

At the very least, I would want to set the gains pretty carefully, so that full gain corresponds to the loudest you want to listen, and so the amount of resolution loss at normal levels is minimised.

[MikeHunt79]

Originally posted by PigletsDad
The downside of this approach is that you reduce DAC resolution at anything other than full volume. To take any extreme example, say you want or need to listen at -90dB. This corresponds to losing 15bits of resolution. On a 16bit sound card, you are down to 1 bit conversion, and even a 24bit one only has 9bits active. Of course, this should be very quite, so may be it is not a problem.

At the very least, I would want to set the gains pretty carefully, so that full gain corresponds to the loudest you want to listen, and so the amount of resolution loss at normal levels is minimised.

Simply buy a nice quad gang pot for volume control - problem solved.