Small cheap USB DAC, any recommendation?

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Franfj

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Joined 2011
I am looking for a small cheap DAC, what I'm planning to do is to fix it in a small TA2020 Amp to hopefully avoid the high noise coming from my Macbook Pro Jack Socket.

What I need is USB connectivity (no need of optical or coaxial inputs), low price (about 10€ will be fine, I don't plan spending more than the cost of the amp in the DAC)…

I have had a look and found cheap DACs based on PCM2704 like this
An externally hosted image should be here but it was not working when we last tested it.

http://www.ebay.es/itm/MINI-PCM2704...ipment_Tools&hash=item1e68993740#ht_573wt_970

Opinions about them? Any other better option for that price?

I hope that using a separate DAC instead the Macbook jack output will reduce the noise that it produces…
 
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neebster

Member
Joined 2011
In my experience with computers and sound, if your problem is a ground loop, sometimes even having a cheap usb dac (particularly one powered by the USB bus), won't eliminate noise.

You may instead want to try a good ground loop isolator. Parts express has one that has been measured to have flat response from 20-20khz. Other good ones exist on Amazon, etc. You can make one using 1:1 transformers, if you wish.

edit: if you unplug your macbook from the power supply, and the noise substantially diminishes or disappears, you can almost certainly fix this with a $10 isolator.
 
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Franfj

Member
Joined 2011
neebster said:
In my experience with computers and sound, if your problem is a ground loop, sometimes even having a cheap usb dac (particularly one powered by the USB bus), won't eliminate noise.

You may instead want to try a good ground loop isolator. Parts express has one that has been measured to have flat response from 20-20khz. Other good ones exist on Amazon, etc. You can make one using 1:1 transformers, if you wish.

edit: if you unplug your macbook from the power supply, and the noise substantially diminishes or disappears, you can almost certainly fix this with a $10 isolator.
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Thanks for the reply ;)

Mmm, with the Macbook unpluged I get the same noise (even with headphones and the macbook unpluged is audible) so I think that is not a ground loop problem (and is not like a 50hz humm, is more like a med-high frequency white noise).

Considering that, do you think that using an external DAC will improve sound?

Thanks
 
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martinbls

Member
Joined 2009
Hi!

I have the same problem with the analog-stereo-output on my old (but beloved) IBM TP T22. It's this "white-noise" kind of sound, which has nothing to do with a ground loop. An isolation transformer would not help. I would recommend buying a nice USB-DAC, or, try to use a volume pot between the stereo-output and your amp. At moderate to even high volumes the noise-level is hardly notable. Only without a pot (when adjusting volume only via the digital notebook volume control) the noise is always there, regardless of the digital volume level.

For USB-DACs: I really recommend the KingRex UD-01. Even the stock version sounds quite sophisticated. To go for something really inexpensive might not be a long term solution.

Regards - Martin
 
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Franfj

Member
Joined 2011
jrenkin said:
Try the twisted pear USB converter, it is designed to output SPDIF or IS2, but has a quite acceptable DAC chip for analog output, too. It would be a flexible option in the future.
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Looks interesting. The other models mentioned are out of my possibilities at the moment.

I will try to increase the what I could pay for something like this and try to get other options...

Any "good" USB DAC + Headphone AMP under 60$?
 
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