Good standalone DAC?

[lbrwnie]

Hi guys!

I have recently acquired a really nice late 1970's AMP and a pair of ATH-M50x's. With this pairing I can actually hear noise from my motherboard onboard sound. Is there a good relatively cheap DAC that I could get to improve the sound in general? Would plugging the input to the amp into a monitor with sound coming from my GPU be any better?

Thanks

[Hans Christian | Teri]

Hi guys!

I have recently acquired a really nice late 1970's AMP and a pair of ATH-M50x's. With this pairing I can actually hear noise from my motherboard onboard sound. Is there a good relatively cheap DAC that I could get to improve the sound in general? Would plugging the input to the amp into a monitor with sound coming from my GPU be any better?

Thanks

 

Getting sound from your monitor will absolutely not help. Are you sure the noise is not from your 70's amp? By no means bashing old equipment here, but if it was rather cheap back then there's a decent chance that it's terrible, and it is much more likely to produce notable noise than your motherboard.

[spwath]

Yes if you plug it into monitor it will fix it, unless amp is problemv

[Guest]

Can we get more information than "nice 1970s amp"? It could well be that the M50x is just too sensitive and is picking up the noise floor of the amp.

[lbrwnie]

Can we get more information than "nice 1970s amp"? It could well be that the M50x is just too sensitive and is picking up the noise floor of the amp.

Sansui AU 3900

[Guest]

Sansui AU 3900

 

Ah, well it appears the headphone out is tapped from the speaker line. So if I had to guess, it is just too noisy for a sensitive, low-impedance headphone. Plus, it's old.