What made you want to use an external DAC?

Just bought my first DAC, an SMSL SU-8. I stream from a Squeezebox Touch, which has a pretty decent internal DAC, but I figured I'd try out something with newer technology(ironic, given that I heavily favor vintage audio gear over new stuff) and see if I can hear a difference, at the very least. It's a pretty cheap unit, and it's gotten pretty good reviews. Not much risk for hopefully a little reward.
 
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All my music is stored on an external HDD and I've been listening for years via 3.5mm to stereo RCA from PC sound card to AVR. Earlier this year I did a Google search, probably along the lines of something like this, "improve PC sound quality for music". What's this external DAC thingy I'm reading about?!? Further research indicated I should get an external USB DAC. So, I did. As cheap as it was ($30) it made a immediate improvement. Now that I know it's not snake oil, I can definitely see an upgrade to a better DAC in the hopefully not too distant future. Enjoy your listening, everyone! :thumbsup:
 
I pretty much went the same route. I started with a Behringer UCA-222 @ ~$30 it sounded so much better than the onboard DAC's of the three laptops I had at the time that I invested more money in better USB DAC's.

FWIW: My main music server laptop feeds an Emotiva XDA-2. The laptop in my bedroom feeds a Topping D-10
 
For me it was subscription streaming (PC & Laptop) … Mog .. then Xbox Music, then Spotify and RDIO, currently using Tidal and I'm on my 3rd external DAC & accessories upgrade.

Present day .. I'm using an external dac (USB/Optical/Coax) for DVR & Universal Blu Ray player as well.
 
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I purchased a "vintage" external DAC for the external power supply. I needed the power supply for an Aragon 47K phono preamp. I decided to try it out connected to my CD player. Wow! what a difference. Needless to say, I purchased another power supply. I still use it (an Aragon D2AMkII) although I purchased another DAC (Chord Qutest) for my computer. I haven't heard anything that can touch it for CD though.
 
I know nothing, absolutely nothing about these things, my main digital player is an Elite DV-45A and I would be curious about upgrading this part of the system to a setup that does everything it does via audio audibly better on all media. I have no interest in streaming at this time.
I'd prefer to find best value pre-owned options that are more than just Red Book CD.
Thnx for any useful information.
 
...my main digital player is an Elite DV-45A and I would be curious about upgrading this part of the system to a setup that does everything it does via audio audibly better on all media.

I've got Pio's newer (still old) Elite DV-48AV which outputs all its digital audio over HDMI where my receiver decodes and DACs it. Only trick is you have to remember to select a high VIDEO resolution (which applies to the HDMI interface) in order to "open the pipe wide enough" to successfully transmit digital AUDIO for multichannel SACD. Otherwise, it'll only send two-channel.

Nice unit and cheap too, as I recall.
 
It was kind of a cascade of things. I had a lot of digital music on my ipod (though sadily, not high quality), and was thinking of integrating the digital library into my system. I learned about the Raspberry Pi being used as a media player, and a member here offered to send me his old HiFiBerry Digi+ board he was no longer using. That resulted in my getting a raspberry pi, a case, setting it up, and then ultimately a DAC. I have been happy with it, though I have not used it as much as vinyl (tonight I might though as digital has the great convenience factor).
 
Kinda like @judsonw. After I'd learned to use my Sony blu-ray player as a streaming device, serving up our old ripped CDs from a "mediatomb" daemon on a Raspberry Pi box running Debian Linux, it didn't take long to notice how uninvolving the blu-ray's analog output sounded compared to a decent disc player. I picked up one of those cigarette-pack-sized MUSE D/A boxes and used it for a while, which helped quite a bit. Then earlier this month we acquired a used Bryston BDA-1 DAC and it's been another big step up in quality, helping not only with the streamed music but also when spinning new discs, and when enjoying good 2-channel home theater.
 
I started with external 'pro-sumer' audio strips back in about 2004 or so when I joined a band and they needed demos for promotion. So, I gathered a Presonus audio strip with 8 mic inputs, some mics and we started recording.

Well, the playback was darn good - even though the band itself wasn't doing that well. In between recording sessions, I left the Presonus hooked up and started listening to some local stations (KPIG, for one) who had already figured out that they could expand their listener count by going online to stream. Every year since, the quality improved as the radio station's engineers figure out how to get the audio balance and quality right.

At the time many DAC/ADC's used Firewire instead of USB. Even for those using USB, skips, pops, dropouts and other gremlins required that you be a PC Sys Admin to understand how to tweek the operating system, drivers and even the DAC/ADC's firmware to get things working reliably.

I lived with those sorts of configurations for about 10 years then started seeing that you can buy DAC's with switchable analog inputs as well as all the digital inputs types. This allowed me to run my PassDIY Pearl phono preamp into a DAC then switch back to a digital stream without rewiring things. Essentially, this digital preamp configuration is what i run now.

Currently, I'm using the Benchmark DAC2 that a neat feature that, when I switch in one of the 2 analog inputs, the entire audio chain is switched to analog including the volume control. Then, switching back to digital, the audio chain is reconfigured for digital decoding.

The Benchmark DAC's have become my central preamp for both the garage system (DAC1-HDR) and main living room system (DAC2-L). With the remote control, I'm there for preamps. Sold all but one of the old preamps as a result.

The Benchmark's are not inexpensive but when you factor in the cost of a good preamp and good separate DAC, there's less of a cost differential.

Cheers,

David
 
I had a Channel Islands DAC a few years ago, but it died on me. I'm primarily a vinyl guy, but have a very large cd collection, a lot of it now ripped to FLAC and streamed through a Squeezebox Touch. I also have a Sony XA5400ES cd/SACD player which is excellent, particularly with redbook playback. But I came across a DAC (SMSL SU-8) that had good reviews, and selling for a reasonable amount, and figured why not try it and see if it can improve on what is now fairly old technology possessed by the internal DAC's of the above gear. I'm happy to say it has, and my ears are not the best at discerning these things.
 
Just my an FYI. I use the same player, IMO using it as a transport to my SMSL-M8a sounds better to me than just the DV-45a.

:beerchug:
Does it workon for all audio formats?
How is it interfaced to the player?
Output level?
 
Does it workon for all audio formats?
How is it interfaced to the player?
Output level?

I picked it up strictly for streaming so hooking the CD player to it was just a test to see if the external DAC sounded better, it does to me.
Hook up is digital Coax out to DAC. I don’t think it will support SACD’s, but I don’t have any. I picked up the DV-45a to see if it was any better than the $89 Samsung Blu-ray player we have, it wasn’t. Not sure of the output level, I will look at the booklet when I get home later. You can probably google it before I get home. Or I am sure someone will answer that.

Edit: I did think it sounded kind of bright when I first got it. Sounds less so now, pretty sure that’s just me getting use to it.

:beerchug:
 
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I think when you get to $1k and above on dacs there’s a significant difference in sound quality compared to sub $1k, or at least there should be. It’s interesting to me that I used to have the latest high end Dac in my oppo 105d ($1500) a Sabre 32 and my Musical Fidelity TriVista 21 Dac ($2500) is miles better sounding to me . Granted the oppo is a multi media player with a Dac built in and the MF is only a Dac but still interesting how significant the sound difference is .

Audiofreak71

Quite right, I went through quite a few sub $1,000 DAC's and while a number sounded quite good they all sounded digital. I spent quite a lot of time researching analog sounding DAC's and even tried a few. It wasn't until I acquired a Gieseler Groß DAC that I was able to reproduce digitally the same magic that I got with my vinyl rig. As my analog chain improved and surpassed digital versions of the files I've been able to rip the content using a Schiit JIL and playback is to my ears, identical through the Gieseler Groß. Highly recommended guys:

https://www.gieseler.com.au/product-page/groß-dac

I've been reading that apparently a power supply upgrade improves things still further. I'll be trying this for certain:

https://www.stereo.net.au/forums/to...pgrade-for-gross-fein-klein-iii-dac’s/?page=2

If Clay creates a 3 input Klein III DAC then I'll get rid of the Weilang Audio AKM 4497EQ DAC in my second system too. Fantastic value his DAC's.

As to why I started with external DAC's it's quite simple. The tube amp I had at the time had RCA inputs only. Once I heard what a quality external is capable of, I'll never run anything else again :)
 
I don't use an external DAC. Feel very satisfied by the sound quality of my integrated CDP (Astin Trew AT 3500+ factory upgraded).
 
I only bought a DAC because I wanted to stream music from my phone. I connect my iPhone via an Apple Airport Express, which is connected to my DAC via Toslink. It allow me to stream from Tidal, Slacker, YouTube or any other piece of software. I can even link to it with my Windows PC using a little inexpensive program called TuneBlade.
 
I only bought a DAC because I wanted to stream music from my phone. I connect my iPhone via an Apple Airport Express, which is connected to my DAC via Toslink. It allow me to stream from Tidal, Slacker, YouTube or any other piece of software. I can even link to it with my Windows PC using a little inexpensive program called TuneBlade.

Why not simply use the DAC supplied inside the Airport Express while streaming from the iPhone apps to the Airport via AirPlay? Save you the cost of the external DAC unless you need it for some other reason...
 
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