Best possible digital output from a computer?


I've recently purchased a Yulong DAH1 Mark DAC (Chinese brand, not extremely popular). I have to say that so far I am pleased with the sound, and have been using the USB input which is fed by my personal laptop running Foobar or Media Monkey. However, I'm sure that this is not the best possible route, being that this DAC uses the PCM270x chip to accept the I2S stream via USB, which adds another thing into the signal path before sending it to the main AD1955 DAC chip. I believe the sound would be better through coax or optical, but what would be the best way to get a coax/optical output on my laptop? It has neither of those outputs built-in....

Thanks in advance.
jwglista
I've been doing a USB to coax conversion with an ESI U24 soundcard (no longer available, but a very good unit). However, my results are mediocre at best. There are so many issues though from the initial ripping, format, PC, USB to coax, and digital cable to D/A. I can compare the original CD to the ripped version and the original CD is winning by a pretty wide margin. This should not be the case from what most people tell me that really know digital (I am definitely NOT an expert in this area).
Bel Canto has just announced the Bel Canto USB Link 24/96,
a USB-to-S/PDIF converter which looks interesting. Will be unveiled at CES.

Kal
Jwglista,
My Toshiba has, like your laptop, except for firewire, only USB output possibilities. I have no complaints about the soundstage, which is both wide and deep and I see no deterioration at all with the Spoiler compared to vinyl or CD direct. So I tend to doubt that USB per se is your culprit.
Rives - I have yet to find a PCI soundcard that sounds good.

Each of these devices has different drivers and different ways of avoiding kmixer, and PCI cards usually have poor clocks, so the result is a lot of jitter.

It's hard to tell whether it jitter or kmixer that is causing your problems, probably a bit of each.

I would recommend trying to unmap the device to avoid kmixer. WMP will not recognize it anymore, but you should not be using WMP anyway if you want good sound quality. I recently tried this successfullly with a Lynx AES16. Works fine with Foobar and Jriver.

Steve N.
Empirical Audio
Detlof - have you tried rolling thos tubes yet?

I have found that really new ones make a big difference in HF extension and clarity (Siemens CCA grey-plates). They need to measure about 18ma. I get them on ebay, usually from someone in Germany.

Steve N.