My First USB DAC Sounds Dull, Please Help

Before jumping to conclusions on the DAC or cables etc… I highly suggest backing up a few steps, first off get a hold of (unless you have already in the house) a basic DVD player or CD player with a digital out, coax or toslink, If the DAC has one of these inputs test it out, or is it USB only? If so this will not be testable as most disc transports probably don't have a usb out, but anyway simply run the old fashioned way with an optical Disc transport playing a few of your CD's and see if its just an inherited problem of a "Rolled off:" Dac sound or simply the files on the pc your playing…

If its better than its obvious and very possible an optical disc transport is still superior in your case for the time being.. Other than that if it is a Tube DAC I can tell you most newer especially cheap taiwan type components today come with really flat and steril sounding Tubes, you may want to just make a small investment in a better tube for the unit as an experiment before spending more on another dac and hoping it solves the issue… Good luck

Good idea Undertow

Thanks guys for all your inputs.

All my files are in wav format, and I believe I did by-pass the Kmix (I selected the "bypassing Windows kernel mixer" option on the output preferences page). But, I could be wrong. Also, the sound quality was equally terrible with both Windows Player and Foobar.

I would suspect, as you guys have pointed out, that it could be the USB interface on the Laptop. I am going to test the DAC as per Ejlif's suggestion. Unfortunately, I am away on a business trip until December.

But, I will keep you posted.

Thanks
Tasi

Planck,

You should read this Apparently soundcards on PC's and DSP's in DVD players are not "bit-transparent" or you need to be savvy about settings to make sure that no "processing" or bit truncation etc is going on.

Shadorne, thanks for the link. I think I did follow the same precautions described on that wiki, but I will double check my setup.

If this doesn't work, I have to options: Getting a non-tubed\solid state DAC, or an internal soundcard. I am still not sold on the idea that EM-noise can mask a good soundcard like a Lynx.