Can I use an external USB DAC as a totally normal computer sound card?

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Hi guys, sorry for the noob question, but I just cannot find an answer to this question that I have.

My sound card is not working well with Windows 8 (Creative driver issues), and would like to get an external USB DAC instead.

I've been looking at the Cambridge Dacmagic XS (website).

How I want it to work:


  • It replaces my internal PCI sound card.
  • I plug one end into an USB port, and the other end into my integrated amplifier via an RCA cable, and then never touch it again.
  • I will control the volume exclusively via the amplifier's own volume knob.
  • All the computer's audio will work as normal (not just music listening - everything, regardless of software and such).

Will it?

Thanks for reading. :)
 
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Yes, it should work just like that, as long as the drivers play well with Windoze 8. For the most part you don't even need special drivers, as Windoze has USB audio drivers built in. The drivers from the manufacturer can have some special features, tho - if you want them.

But basically USB soundcards are plug-n-play.
 
A "soundcard" is a device with a driver which hooks to the sound subsystem of the operating system and conforms to that API. From the OS point of view it does not matter what specific HW implementation a soundcard has.

External DAC sounds much more "audiophilish" but it behaves just like an internal soundcard.
 
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Yep - it's just a term. They all do basically the same thing. CMedia and TI are the major chip manufacturers that do USB audio chip sets. They all work on the standard Windoze USB audio protocol. Plug it in, it works.

There can be some limitations with external cards, as the USB-1 bus isn't very fast. That may limit the number of channels, or the sampling rate, or both. But in your case - stereo out - no problem at all. Once you plug it in, Windoze should see the USB device and switch up as the default device. If for some reason it doesn't, you can choose it in the Windoze Control Panel.
 
Some pci-e soundcard provide special effects and take over calculations from the CPU. Especially for videogames. USB DAC won't do that. Either you'll increase the load on the CPU or some effects won't work.

If you don't know about this, you probably don't use those effects and there's no problems.
 
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