Always intereesting to listen to people talk about how to throw their money around. Ignoring all that, heres my recipe for beating down the PC audio issues at lowest price for best results.
1) build your PC right to start... GIGO.
a) use a stable motherboard thats "green PC" ie energy efficient which equals lower noise
b) choose an energy efficient multi processor... the hotter it runs the more cooling noise and other woes you fight
c)use a speedy,quiet SSD for your main drive for programs only and a quiet hard disk drive to handle the space needed to store your music files
d) run a 64bit OS for best hardware performance
e) use at least 4 gig of RAM to minimize disk read activity
f) use a decent video card to offload cycles from your CPU
g) eliminate all unnecessary fans and use the quietest running after market CPU cooler you can.
once you have your system up and running, turn off indexing and if its a dedicated music server disable swap file... background disk processes are your enemy for jitter. So far your total PC cost should be around $600-$700.
The whole point of this path is to eradicate as much as possible the issues that cause noise and jitter before audio signal even leaves your PC. I'm not a big fan of trying to engineer around a design thats broken, that just leads to the fix creating new problems.
Now that you have done the analog equivalent of creating a good turntable to spin your disc, you have to make some choices that center around dollars for sound transfer... You have to get the music out of the PC to your preamp.
Cheapest option: ASUS sound card, supports up to 192Khz sample rate at 24bit, kernel streaming. Price anywhere from $50 for a DS to $200 for a Xonar Essence STX. I've been using the DS for a while about to switch to the Essence to get a better analog section + RCA out vs minijack.
Better option: use an external DAC and the SPDIF of the ASUS. Plan on spending $500 + for this.
I can't comment on the value of the asynch USB to SPDIF and reclocker options since I haven't tried them... and I have never seen a review trial where one of these went up against an optimized PC to show that it could improve output even on a dedicated music server design. They probably have value for off the shelf machines which are already design compromised.
1) build your PC right to start... GIGO.
a) use a stable motherboard thats "green PC" ie energy efficient which equals lower noise
b) choose an energy efficient multi processor... the hotter it runs the more cooling noise and other woes you fight
c)use a speedy,quiet SSD for your main drive for programs only and a quiet hard disk drive to handle the space needed to store your music files
d) run a 64bit OS for best hardware performance
e) use at least 4 gig of RAM to minimize disk read activity
f) use a decent video card to offload cycles from your CPU
g) eliminate all unnecessary fans and use the quietest running after market CPU cooler you can.
once you have your system up and running, turn off indexing and if its a dedicated music server disable swap file... background disk processes are your enemy for jitter. So far your total PC cost should be around $600-$700.
The whole point of this path is to eradicate as much as possible the issues that cause noise and jitter before audio signal even leaves your PC. I'm not a big fan of trying to engineer around a design thats broken, that just leads to the fix creating new problems.
Now that you have done the analog equivalent of creating a good turntable to spin your disc, you have to make some choices that center around dollars for sound transfer... You have to get the music out of the PC to your preamp.
Cheapest option: ASUS sound card, supports up to 192Khz sample rate at 24bit, kernel streaming. Price anywhere from $50 for a DS to $200 for a Xonar Essence STX. I've been using the DS for a while about to switch to the Essence to get a better analog section + RCA out vs minijack.
Better option: use an external DAC and the SPDIF of the ASUS. Plan on spending $500 + for this.
I can't comment on the value of the asynch USB to SPDIF and reclocker options since I haven't tried them... and I have never seen a review trial where one of these went up against an optimized PC to show that it could improve output even on a dedicated music server design. They probably have value for off the shelf machines which are already design compromised.