18 Mar
2004
18 Mar
'04
12:41 p.m.
On Thu, Mar 18, 2004 at 06:49:03AM -0800, Mark Knecht wrote:
I will also point out that you would not, I think, be
able to hear the
direct effects of your choice of dither in this setup. All audio you
send to this unit would have to be dithered so all you could do would be
make a comparitive judgement.
While that may be true, it's the same problem whether the DAC is
internal or external, if it's 16 bit in both cases.
Over the top of all of these points, I think you want
to be pretty
careful choosing your D/A. They do sound different.
So the choice is between:
- an internal DAC that may be of indifferent quality and pick up
noise from the PC's internal electrical environment.
- an external DAC that will be electrically isolated from the PC and
will have nice clean power but may have clock jitter problems.
Aren't external DACs usually purchased as an upgrade to the internal DAC
of a CD/MD/whatever? I would expect the sound quality to be noticeably
superior or there'd be no point in buying it.
Of course, that's what salesmen call "telling the customer what he wants
to hear", so it not guaranteed to be true :-)
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