Extenal Sound Card?

[toast boy]

Hi all, looking for a bit of advice on whether I'd benefit from an external sound card and if so, what I should be looking at?

Due to necessity I sold my Cyrus CD player and am listening to all of my music from a Mac Mini through a Cyrus amp and Mission speakers. The music is all ripped on Apple Lossless quality but will I get better results with an external sound card rather than using the Mac's onboard one?

Cheers.

[strudel]

An alternative idea would be to use the digital out on the mac and pipe it into a DAC.

[toast boy]

What would I take the digital out from? USB?

[strudel]

Nope, it's built in. It's the same slot as the line out, it's interchangable. (It was on my old one anyway).

[toast boy]

Ah, I see. Cheers. If I was going to do this I'd be looking at doing it on a budget so would be looking at something cheap/second hand on ebay. Is this likely to be a false economy do you think? Would I be better off to wait until I can afford to spend some proper money on a good DAC?

[Bullett]

Airport express?

[davepoth]

If you want really good quality it's all going to be about the DAC. An external sound card is not going to be a long way ahead of the internal Mac gubbins.

[Seeker UK]

davepoth said:

If you want really good quality it's all going to be about the DAC. An external sound card is not going to be a long way ahead of the internal Mac gubbins.

An external soundcard is a DAC.

Best value external soundcard IMHO is is an Edirol UA1-EX which will suppork 96khz / 24 bit files. Not Naim / Meridian standard but a good introduction to digital sources for a reasonable price.

If the OP likes it then they could u/grade the interface to something like a Cambridge Audio Dacmagic.

[davepoth]

Seeker UK said:

davepoth said:

If you want really good quality it's all going to be about the DAC. An external sound card is not going to be a long way ahead of the internal Mac gubbins.

An external soundcard is a DAC.

Best value external soundcard IMHO is is an Edirol UA1-EX which will suppork 96khz / 24 bit files. Not Naim / Meridian standard but a good introduction to digital sources for a reasonable price.

If the OP likes it then they could u/grade the interface to something like a Cambridge Audio Dacmagic.

I'd not really say the Edirol is a sound card, more a USB ASIO audio interface, designed for recording and not optimised for playback A USB Sound card would be something like this IMV:

http://www.google.co.uk/products/catalog?hl=en&amp...

Which really won't help. That Cambridge Audio doodah looks lovely though.

[toast boy]

Thanks for the replies. That Cambridge DAC doesn't look too expensive, there are a few on eBay so I'll just have to keep my eyes open for one.