Computer output to DAC, which route?

The "U" in USB stands for Universal. IEEE 1394 (Firewire) is NOT universal. Most motherboards have dropped support for it. And so are most DAC vendors, sadly, have too. Universality often wins out over quality.

Motherboard based Toslink & RCA SPDIF signal paths are cheaply made, and sound that way... to me, at least. Even with the addition of a galvanic isolation transformer. I have listened to a dozen or more of them feeding a WEISS DAC 202, among others. (This was my job for a period of time) Consider that the entire motherboard costs $100, and they have to include a lot of other parts for those 100 dollars.

I'm not sure how to best invest $200. What inputs do you have on your "old D/A converter"? For less than your budget, a USB based M2Tech HiFace2 will get you RCA or BNC SPDIF out with quality clocks and galvanic isolation.

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USB is pretty pathetic. Firewire does blow it away. For $200 - heck - $150 - just get an ESI Juli@ soundcard. it blows away the usb at a much lower cost.

USB sucks - plain and simple. Use it to connect your mouse and printer, not a dac...

Don't believe everything you read. USB is great if you select the RIGHT USB interface. Beats 99% of transports at any price. Just get an Off-Ramp 5 and Dynamo power supply. It blows away everything, including the very best PCI cards and Firewire interfaces.

PCI cards suck, plain and simple. I have had most of them, including the $2K Lynx and RME cards. Most of them have PLLs for the Master Clock allowing them to sync to an external word-clock. Really bad idea. Only a free-running Master Clock oscillator is capable of low jitter. My customers send these PCI cards to me to test with my reclockers because they have such high jitter.

Here are some customer reviews of good USB interfaces:

http://www.empiricalaudio.com/news-and-reviews/off-ramp-converter

http://www.empiricalaudio.com/news-and-reviews/overdrive-dac

Steve N.
Empirical Audio

I didn't know that about USB
Thanks