External sound device vs PCI soundcard

The optimum solution will be a high-quality DAC, such as a Benchmark with a USB interface installed, or an outboard USB-to-S/PDIF coax converter. Installing the USB interface inside the DAC is better, but the outboard converter can be quite excellent as well. Far better than the best transport on the market.

Steve N.
Empirical Audio
Manufacturer

I picked up a Lynx One sound card (msrp $500) on ebay for $200, using Monkey Audio (APE) for lossless compresion, and foobar 2000 for my media player. It all sounds great but the sound card is designed for professional sound mixing people and sometimes I wonder if this makes the card a bit more difficult to work with. But it sounds great and I sold my MSB Dac/ McCormick Transport, have never looked back.

Audio/Video
Sherwood Newcastle AVP-9080R preamp
Sherbourn 5/1500A amp (5 x 200 watt/ch)
Front Speakers – Paradigm studio 20’s
Center – Paradigm Reference CC
Rears – Monitor Audio Silver S1
Sub – PSB Century SubSonic 2I
DVD/CD Kenwood Sovereign DV-5700 (w/ DVD audio)
Sony 36” XBR450, HDTV

Computer
Motherboard- MSI K7N2G-ILSR, CPU – AMD Athlon 2500, Window XP home, RAM – Kingston 512mb
Hard Drive – Maxtor 160GB, Case – Antec Sonata w/ Thermalright heatsink and Panaflo L1a fan
Video Card – ATI AIW 9600, Transcoder- Crescendo-Systems TCP2200, Powerstrip
Sound Card – LynxOne, Media Player – Foobar
DVD/CD Burner – Plextor PX-708A

I tried an M Audio delta 44 but the computer power supply noise was so high I gave it up. I did buy and install their M Audio DIO 24/48 and have used their Flying Calf S/PDFI 24 bit dac for 4+ years with great results. I am doing many locations recordings in 2-channel and it sounds better than many commercial recording I buy. I do wish I had maybe bought the ADA 1000 from Lucid, but I am over it. It is probably better, but by what degree?

I have a new laptop and will be turning that into a 2-channel recording rig as well, probably using firewire. Cool Edit 2000 is no more so it looks like CakeWalk to the rescue.

Jim Tavegia

can the M-Audio FireWire 410 be used with a turntable (direct input from a turntable) for converting analog to digital? turntables need a pre-amp if not mistaken....

i'm trying to get set up to record some vinyl to cd. I was also hoping to be able to use the device for some home studio recording as well. if the M-Audio FireWire 410 isn't a good choice or i need a supplemental piece of hardware please advise. i'm pretty much a rookie here.

thanks
geo

I am using Apple Airport wireless unit with its audio out connected to the benchmark media DAC1. I store all my music, lossless, on my notebook and stream it to the DAC1 through the apple unit.