I have a Topping E30 fed from a Pi via USB. It works perfectly. Occasionally I'd like to listen to my desktop PC but it has literally no audio out other than a 3.5mm headphone socket. I've looked into getting something for it so I could connect to my DAC's coax or optical in but some of the hardware assumes I can run jumper wires from the add-on to an spdif header on the motherboard and I don't think I have any. I guess this means I'm looking at a USB based solution. So a few questions:
1) Am I going to be ok with literally any USB -> coax or optical convertor?
2) I assume that I just use a regular RCA lead for the coax?
3) Any reason to prefer optical? I did connect this PC to the DAC via USB and it was just ridiculously, unusably noisy, so I'm thinking optical may be the way to go.
I'm going to be playing FLAC files and watching the odd YouTube video or running Audacity or watching videos. It's not going to replace my Pi as the main player so I'm not all that bothered about the quality to the point where I'm interested in spending loads of money, but there's no reason for it to sound bad. The PC is runing Ubuntu 22.04.
1) Am I going to be ok with literally any USB -> coax or optical convertor?
2) I assume that I just use a regular RCA lead for the coax?
3) Any reason to prefer optical? I did connect this PC to the DAC via USB and it was just ridiculously, unusably noisy, so I'm thinking optical may be the way to go.
I'm going to be playing FLAC files and watching the odd YouTube video or running Audacity or watching videos. It's not going to replace my Pi as the main player so I'm not all that bothered about the quality to the point where I'm interested in spending loads of money, but there's no reason for it to sound bad. The PC is runing Ubuntu 22.04.
Last edited: