Skip to main content ↑ ↓

Notice

Please note that most of the software linked on this forum is likely to be safe to use. If you are unsure, feel free to ask in the relevant topics, or send a private message to an administrator or moderator. To help curb the problems of false positives, or in the event that you do find actual malware, you can contribute through the article linked here.
Topic: external stereo soundcard (Read 5261 times) previous topic - next topic
0 Members and 1 Guest are viewing this topic.

external stereo soundcard

Hi.
I am looking for a external soundcard  (for use with a laptop) for a friend. He intends to use it for steroe only, and connect it to his relativly good Hi-Fi system. So the factors I am looking at is (a) price and (b) stereo quality.
The thing is that I dont know much about external soundcards, or the interface that connects them to the amp/reciver. In the "good old days" I would just buy a soundcard with a good DAC and hook it to the stereojack input on the reciver. But today maybe some kind of digital interface would be prefered? I dont know what reciver he has, but it is 5 years old, and was quite expensive then, with several input options.
(1)
So basicly, what should I tell him to look for in the manual, do they usaly call it something special, or is it called e.g spdif, coax or optical? And witch of these are most used, both in recivers and in external soundcards?
(2)Any recomendations on soundcards? I an looking at e.g "Creative Sound Blaster Live! 24-Bit External USB" and "TerraTec Aureon 5.1 USB MKII".

The important thing is, next to price, to get good quality when it is connected to his stero. Quality to headphones, input etc is not important.
Thanks in advance

external stereo soundcard

Reply #1 –
Search for usb soundcard in the head-fi "computer as source" forum.

external stereo soundcard

Reply #2 –
If it's a good soundcard, you'll get good results with the analog outputs. If you prefer s/pdif, both optical and coaxial connections are commonly used. Receivers most often have all these options.

There aren't too many choices in external soundcards. I think the ones you're naming are about as good as it gets, unless you're going to spend considerably more money (as in double to triple that price).

One more option that _might_ be worth looking at (haven't seen any reviews of it yet) is this Behringer UCA202. One thing I like about it is that the specifications aren't hyped, unlike those of most consumer products. The company has a good quality-on-a-budget reputation.

external stereo soundcard

Reply #3 –
mortiferus, note that the soundcards you are looking at are not good choices. There are good USB offerings from M-Audio, E-MU (upcoming), and ESI among others. There are also "USB DACs" which I can't vouch for or against.

external stereo soundcard

Reply #4 –
I was considering making such a comment too
But then, the next-up offering pricewise is from M-Audio I think, and would be nearly double the price (correct me if I'm wrong). So I thought it wasn't fair to say that

external stereo soundcard

Reply #5 –
I am also trying to upgrade sound on my old computer for listening to digital audio.
The computer:
CPU: Celeron 433 MHz
RAM: 256 MB
OS: Windows XP PRO SP2
Current sound card: SB AWE32 PnP

The AWE32 has a very bad S/N ratio and a lot of white noise. I wonder if the computer has enough juice to hook some new external sound card to it or would it be better to buy some used PCI sound card? Can you give me some advice, please? 
Note that I would also prefer a very good stereo-only sound card to some 5.1 card.
lame -V 0

external stereo soundcard

Reply #6 –
@psycho:
A USB device puts more of a burden on the system than a PCI card (well, if it's a proper PCI card - there are some that are basically just AC97 codecs that offload everything to the cpu). So I'd say, go for a PCI card.

external stereo soundcard

Reply #7 –
Quote from: CSMR on
mortiferus, note that the soundcards you are looking at are not good choices. There are good USB offerings from M-Audio, E-MU (upcoming), and ESI among others. There are also "USB DACs" which I can't vouch for or against.


The Edirol UA-1EX is good and cheap external DAC. It can either be used with the standard USB Audio class drivers or with its own ASIO driver. There are ASIO plugins available for Foobar and Winamp.

external stereo soundcard

Reply #8 –
Quote from: CSMR on
mortiferus, note that the soundcards you are looking at are not good choices. There are good USB offerings from M-Audio, E-MU (upcoming), and ESI among others. There are also "USB DACs" which I can't vouch for or against.

This brings up something I was wondering about. If one uses the digital interface, optical og coax, how much do the soundcard differ? I was under the impression that it transfered the PCM sound, and then the reciver did the digital-audio convertion? So what then, if what I thought is correct,  is the quiality difference between the cheep and less cheap cards, and how easy is it to hear?

external stereo soundcard

Reply #9 –
A bit of not-a-subject but I have a particular question - what is your opinion about SB Live!24?..

external stereo soundcard

Reply #10 –
Quote from: mortiferus on
This brings up something I was wondering about. If one uses the digital interface, optical og coax, how much do the soundcard differ? I was under the impression that it transfered the PCM sound, and then the reciver did the digital-audio convertion? So what then, if what I thought is correct,  is the quiality difference between the cheep and less cheap cards, and how easy is it to hear?


Some interfaces will resample the digital signal from the original frequency to 48KHz before outputing it via the digital output in this case there may be some difference. In other cases, where the signal is output in the original sampling frequency, the only real differences are in the stability of the clock. There are people who claim that they can hear differences between cheap interfaces and ones with expensive super stable clocks but I suspect they wouldn't stand up to ABXing.

Stability of clocks does make a difference when you have lots of digital signals all being combined. Infact most recording studios have a single external clock source which all the equipment is slaved off rather than using the embedded clock in the digital signal itself.

external stereo soundcard

Reply #11 –
So to get this straight.
He is not going to use it to listen with headphones, or in any other way use the analog output (as I asume that his relativly expensive amp is a better DAC than most of the soundcards that I consider).
Then the main difference between the different cards are if they resample and not, and how good the resample engine is. Is this anything "a bit above normal ears", around 50 years (but not golden ears) would be able to catch?

external stereo soundcard

Reply #12 –
@Patsoe
Thanks for that explaination!

My next question is, which old PCI stereo-only sound card was the absolute best? What do you make of Creative Soundblaster Live! 1024?
lame -V 0

external stereo soundcard

Reply #13 –
Quote from: mortiferus on
So to get this straight.
He is not going to use it to listen with headphones, or in any other way use the analog output (as I asume that his relativly expensive amp is a better DAC than most of the soundcards that I consider).
Then the main difference between the different cards are if they resample and not, and how good the resample engine is. Is this anything "a bit above normal ears", around 50 years (but not golden ears) would be able to catch?

I don't know. Probably not so important if the resampling is done well, but that is not guaranteed. If you want a really simple and inexpensive digital out solution get a M-Audio transit because I think it is bit-perfect without having to use ASIO (which would need to be set up in whatever audio applications you would use).

external stereo soundcard

Reply #14 –
Quote from: psycho on
My next question is, which old PCI stereo-only sound card was the absolute best?


Actually, even the rather old soundcards were often multichannel cards. We're going a bit offtopic in this _external_ soundcard thread, so I hope it helps if I refer you to this very old posting I made (your asking for old cards, right?) click
 

external stereo soundcard

Reply #15 –
@Patsoe
Thanks again!
You're right... sorry for OT.
lame -V 0