[linux-audio-user] Poor SN ratio with high quality sound cards

[Mark Williams (MWP)]

Really the only thing you can do is invest in a good quality external DAC and
run a SPDIF (optical preferably for ground isolation) signal to it.

It seems a lot of high quality soundcards now are quoting the S/N and other
stats of those of the DACs used on the card, not by measurment of what actually
comes out of the back of the card.

The main problem is the power supply in the PC.
Its just far too noisy to be able to produce good quality audio.

> Gentlemen:
> 
> I follow this list from the digest, so I could have missed a critical post. If 
> so, please point me to the thread. 
> 
> I have two PCs I use almost exclusively for sound editing (with ReZound --- 
> highly recommended for its crossfade ability). I record classical music on an 
> Alesis MasterLink at 96kHz/24 bits, so I have quite a SN ratio to begin with. 
> I need to edit the gaps between tracks where I want to preserve the hall 
> ambience.  Whether I use an RME Digi96 PAD or an M-Audio Delta 44, the signal 
> I get out of the sound editor is so low that I hear a lot of hum and other 
> extraneous noise by the time I crank my amplifier's volume up enough to hear 
> what is between the pieces. This noise is _not_ there when I burn a CD-R, 
> however. 
> 
> I assume this means I need to send a digital signal (preferably 96/24 and 
> lower) to an external DAC before sending the signal to my monitoring system. 
> Would someone be kind enough to explain how to get a signal out of a PC that 
> is fully equivalent in S/N to the CD-Rs the computer can burn?  
> 
> Many thanks, 
> 
> John