25 Feb
2002
25 Feb
'02
6:18 a.m.
-----Original Message-----
From: Richard Erlacher [mailto:edick@idcomm.com]
I think you'll find this depends more on your
definition of
"wonderful" which
may be "acceptable" even to me, fussy as I am, but anything
powered with the
PSU of a PC, even in its own enclosure, will not give
signal-to-noise ratio
worthy of the designation "audiophile." You might get 20, or
even 30 db, but
you should have at least 80 db and preferably 120 db of SNR
and less PSU
feed-through than that. I've seen only one card that came
anywhere close to
that and it was encased in a copper-plated steel shield and
powered with a
battery that it charged when it wasn't in use. It was not a
commercial unit.
FWIW, there are also high-end PCI audio subsystems which accept
direct digital input (and provide output) to an external rackmount
DAC/ADC, which usually has several 1/4", RCA(?), and XLR connectors.
Those would probably qualify, since by the time the audio got to the
point of being affected by the noise of the PSU, it would be in
digital form.
I suppose that you could also do the same kind of thing with a normal
(relatively cheap -- like sound blaster live) board, by using only
SPDIF connections, and getting a set of speakers, or separate amp that
will accept SPDIF in (for playback).
There are even a couple of record players with SPDIF out (I've always
wondered why, and this seems as good a reason as any) -- that would
solve the problem nicely.
I have a set of Altec-Lanseng powered speakers which have a somewhat OK
frequency response, and accept SPDIF in. They work very well with my
dedicated hard disk recorder.
So, um, anyway, this is starting to diverge from on-topic. :)
Regards,
Chris
Christopher Smith, Perl Developer
Amdocs - Champaign, IL
/usr/bin/perl -e '
print((~"\x95\xc4\xe3"^"Just Another Perl
Hacker.")."\x08!\n");
'