You shouldn't need to go through all of this trouble to get better results. Something else is going on.
I don't know about that particular card, but have lots of experience with the Coax out of the M-Audio 24/96 and even the less expensive Revolution. I typically use plain old MusicmMatch Jukebox and do everything as WAV files. The results are very good. Not as good as multi-thousand dollar transports, but at least as good as entry level ones.
I also don't have any experience with your specific DAC. I can tell you that some DACs are much more sensitive to timing error than others and that could be a problem. In my experience, the Perceptual Technologies units work very well with PC's as a source.
For my own system, I use a Lynx AES16 with AES/EBU digital out into an Audio Research DAC3mkII. It gives me the best results of anything I have ever tried. The cards from Lynx and RME are better sounding than most others, including the otherwise pretty good M-Audio cards.
I used to spend a lot of time experimenting with this stuff and comparing the best I could achieve with a PC to very high end transports like the Audio Research CD3 and Linn CD12, for comparison.
For those of you who think that a transport is just a transport and that a PC can easily equal any transport, my experience has found that nothing could be further from the truth.
I don't know about that particular card, but have lots of experience with the Coax out of the M-Audio 24/96 and even the less expensive Revolution. I typically use plain old MusicmMatch Jukebox and do everything as WAV files. The results are very good. Not as good as multi-thousand dollar transports, but at least as good as entry level ones.
I also don't have any experience with your specific DAC. I can tell you that some DACs are much more sensitive to timing error than others and that could be a problem. In my experience, the Perceptual Technologies units work very well with PC's as a source.
For my own system, I use a Lynx AES16 with AES/EBU digital out into an Audio Research DAC3mkII. It gives me the best results of anything I have ever tried. The cards from Lynx and RME are better sounding than most others, including the otherwise pretty good M-Audio cards.
I used to spend a lot of time experimenting with this stuff and comparing the best I could achieve with a PC to very high end transports like the Audio Research CD3 and Linn CD12, for comparison.
For those of you who think that a transport is just a transport and that a PC can easily equal any transport, my experience has found that nothing could be further from the truth.