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Cheapest possible solution

Posted by Christine Tham (R) on February 20, 2007 at 22:53:32

In Reply to: Better negative than uninformed... posted by dave in gva on February 20, 2007 at 22:27:14:

Since the LA10 reclocks everything, the jitter of the digital signal is not really an issue.The normal concern about optical out (high jitter) doesn't really apply in this case.

Therefore, you should be able to get away with an optical digital out. Optical has the advantage that there's no electrical connection between the PC and the DA10, hence no possibility of logic induced modulation from the PC. This is a big win in my book - even better than using USB (since arguably there is still an electrical connection).

Given that, even a cheap motherboard based audio codec will do, as long as it has an SPDIF header and you get an optical out bracket.

If you are running XP, you need to find something that is bit perfect if you use DirectKS. From memory, there are a few motherboard HD audio chipsets that will do this (but I seem to recall the trick is to substitute the vendor specific driver with the generic UAA driver - suddenly 44.1 is available over SPDIF - for example, this worked on a PC I have with a Cmedia 9880). With Vista this is less of an issue - just about any HD Audio codec should do.

A Juli@ is okay (but from memory has no ASIO driver, only DirectKS?). Otherwise a low end XFi or the 0404 will also do the trick. Try and pick something with native ASIO drivers if possible, and try and avoid using ASIO4ALL (simpler is better, and less chance of problems).

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