Hello all,
Before I start I will let you all know I did use the search button but still can not find a straight answer for question.
I have some 9-10 year old Polk speakers that I bought for about $150. I found them at a swap meet and used my phone to google them. To my surprise they were on the internet selling for 500-600 used. They're being shipped to me right now so I don't know the model number.
Anyways, I live in a fairly small dorm room(11 by 21) feet. I am going to use my PC and Yamaha receiver for the speakers. My question is, what do I need to get in order to have high quality audio. I have a normal onboard sound card on my laptop. I'm just new to the whole soundcard vs DAC thing. I understand them both but don't know which is a better deal. Should I even bother with upgrading the PC's audio? All my files are in FLAC and I want the best quality I can get. I have a budget of about $200.
If any of this is in another thread please point me in the right direction.
Before I start I will let you all know I did use the search button but still can not find a straight answer for question.
I have some 9-10 year old Polk speakers that I bought for about $150. I found them at a swap meet and used my phone to google them. To my surprise they were on the internet selling for 500-600 used. They're being shipped to me right now so I don't know the model number.
Anyways, I live in a fairly small dorm room(11 by 21) feet. I am going to use my PC and Yamaha receiver for the speakers. My question is, what do I need to get in order to have high quality audio. I have a normal onboard sound card on my laptop. I'm just new to the whole soundcard vs DAC thing. I understand them both but don't know which is a better deal. Should I even bother with upgrading the PC's audio? All my files are in FLAC and I want the best quality I can get. I have a budget of about $200.
If any of this is in another thread please point me in the right direction.
jfinne16
If you have a spare PCI-E slot in your PC, something like an Asus Xonar d2x should be available for under $200.
It's Analogue Out is a little better than average, but more importantly, it has quite a reasonable coaxial S/PDIF output that can be put to good use if you want to add a DAC later on.It is 24/192 capable, and now has an ASIO driver, so you can use software players that can play from System memory for even better results via a good DAC.In that case, the dreaded Windows Mixer is bypassed.
With HDDs so cheap these days in larger sizes, you may wish to consider saving files in .wav format, unless you really want album artwork etc.
Alex
If you have a spare PCI-E slot in your PC, something like an Asus Xonar d2x should be available for under $200.
It's Analogue Out is a little better than average, but more importantly, it has quite a reasonable coaxial S/PDIF output that can be put to good use if you want to add a DAC later on.It is 24/192 capable, and now has an ASIO driver, so you can use software players that can play from System memory for even better results via a good DAC.In that case, the dreaded Windows Mixer is bypassed.
With HDDs so cheap these days in larger sizes, you may wish to consider saving files in .wav format, unless you really want album artwork etc.
Alex
Okay I looked into it and it looks great. Thanks for answering my question. Do you think I should delete all my FLAC files and put my CDs on as .wav. I've got about 2000 songs on my PC but if there's a big sound difference I'll take the time. I just always thought FLAC and .wav were comparable.
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