sKiZo
Hates received: 92644 43.20°N 85.50°W
Happy owner of a Maverick TubeMagic D1+ ... performs well above it's price point. That said, there's always room for improvement.
When I built my HTPC, I had some noise issues right from the start. There's just too much competition for the available resources in today's computers. In my case, I tracked down some stuttering and weirdness to my wireless mouse and keyboard. Solution then was to use an addon card that created it's own dedicated USB channel and plugging just the DAC and ADC into that. Noise gone, solid playback with zero jitter ... me happy. The card I used also tapped power directly from the supply instead of the system buss for better isolation.
Just now went a step further and upgraded that USB addon card with a Paul Pang v2 "audiophile grade" card ...
wOw ... MUCH improved definition and realism! I also added an Acopian power brick to supply the required 5 volts. Not sure how much good that does, but hey, long as I was in there. I found it highly recommended on a couple other forums.
I DID have one magic moment when I booted the computer for the first time after doing the transplant and got a BIOS checksum error ... oh no's! About the time I started going oh shi ... it offered to try using the last known good configuration, and fired right up. Whew ... let's hear it for smart firmware! I did have to reconfigure jRiver Media Center to use the correct device but that was pretty much expected.
When I built my HTPC, I had some noise issues right from the start. There's just too much competition for the available resources in today's computers. In my case, I tracked down some stuttering and weirdness to my wireless mouse and keyboard. Solution then was to use an addon card that created it's own dedicated USB channel and plugging just the DAC and ADC into that. Noise gone, solid playback with zero jitter ... me happy. The card I used also tapped power directly from the supply instead of the system buss for better isolation.
Just now went a step further and upgraded that USB addon card with a Paul Pang v2 "audiophile grade" card ...
wOw ... MUCH improved definition and realism! I also added an Acopian power brick to supply the required 5 volts. Not sure how much good that does, but hey, long as I was in there. I found it highly recommended on a couple other forums.
I DID have one magic moment when I booted the computer for the first time after doing the transplant and got a BIOS checksum error ... oh no's! About the time I started going oh shi ... it offered to try using the last known good configuration, and fired right up. Whew ... let's hear it for smart firmware! I did have to reconfigure jRiver Media Center to use the correct device but that was pretty much expected.