Multichannel dac advice

[john111]

Hi and thanks for reading.

Looking for advice for a good multichannel dac for connecting from my pc to 3 stereo amps to produce 6 channel 5.1 sound.

So far in my dac search I have purchased an asus stx2 soundcard, it has a good fanbase but it turned it to be crap despite me spending a lot of money on discrete opamps, high quality power supply upgrades etc

Then i purchased an expensive arcam reciever, hoping to get away from all that pc noise from the soundcard, but the arcam turned out to be crap as well.

After reading a lot of information on this website i would love some advice on the following dacs:

Sound BlasterX AE-5, AE-7 and AE-5

Also Motu 8a, Motu Ultralite MK4, GIGAPORT eX

I am leaning towards the SBx AE-5 because it has a good review from this site and the price is about how much i want to spend.

I am purely intrested in sound quality not features, add ons, dsp processing etc

I am desperate to know if the other devices are worth the extra money investment compared to the SB x AE-5.

Many thanks.

 

[andrewjohn007]

As it so happens I am in a very similar situation (I'm doing a Mac however not a PC) and find it amazing that there are so few products on the market that fill this need without breaking the bank. I wish Topping would take a stab at it!

I've been checking out the HDMI DAC 5.1 combo units put out by Daok, but I am very skeptical that they would perform well.

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B07X6NSYVJ/ref=nav_timeline_asin?_encoding=UTF8&psc=1

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B07X9C75S9/ref=nav_timeline_asin?_encoding=UTF8&psc=1

I would also like to see how the Creative Labs Sound Blaster X7 would perform. Creative sure touts the unit like it's a winner, but considering how the Omni crapped itself so hard...

Sorry I didn't really offer much in the way of guidance! Good luck and I will be following along.

Andrew

 

[Vincent Kars]

Have a look: https://www.audiosciencereview.com/...d-measurements-of-okto-dac8-8ch-dac-amp.7064/

 

[john111]

Thanks! I like the okto dac but it is balanced output, and my amp is only unbalanced rca, price is really high as well £1000.

What do you think of the mentioned pc soundcards.

I used to have the asus stxII which is supposed to be good according to a lot of reviews but i was getting so much noise and poor performance. Took it to the local pc shop and after examining my pc they said the soundcard ground is sharing the same ground as the cpu and the heavy cpu ground currents is what is causing all the noise and poor performance. The ground voltages are different and this affects performance. Changed motherboard, noise went away and performance improved. Also purchased a second atx power supply and powered the soundcard from that which helped as well.
Shows soundcard performance is influenced by a lot of other things. Perhaps this is why some people are loving the stxII and some hate it.

Also i have been offered a really old dac from 2014, the integra dhc80.6. Do you have any opinions on that, what are integra like as a company do they make good stuff. The asking price is £300.

 

[Swtoby]

As it so happens I am in a very similar situation (I'm doing a Mac however not a PC) and find it amazing that there are so few products on the market that fill this need without breaking the bank. I wish Topping would take a stab at it!

I've been checking out the HDMI DAC 5.1 combo units put out by Daok, but I am very skeptical that they would perform well.

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B07X6NSYVJ/ref=nav_timeline_asin?_encoding=UTF8&psc=1

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B07X9C75S9/ref=nav_timeline_asin?_encoding=UTF8&psc=1

I would also like to see how the Creative Labs Sound Blaster X7 would perform. Creative sure touts the unit like it's a winner, but considering how the Omni crapped itself so hard...

Sorry I didn't really offer much in the way of guidance! Good luck and I will be following along.

Andrew

I have one of the Douk units. It has some nice features like Bluetooth and can double as a HDMI switcher. With its digital outs it also can be used as a SPDIF switcher including USB conversion. The remote isn't bad and works well. Downside is the volume either via the front panel or the remote. The volume up and down is so incremental it gets annoying. It is really slow. As to sound. It seems ok, but when I crank the volume to max and stick my ear to the speakers there is a lot more noticeable hiss than something like a JDS Atom in preamp mode, which is a lot quieter. So a mixed bag. The switching and Bluetooth features is what is making me keep it.

 

[dtaylo1066]

You could buy a Khadas Tone Board and wire up the 8 channel out of the DAC chip.

 

[AnalogSteph]

So far in my dac search I have purchased an asus stx2 soundcard, it has a good fanbase but it turned it to be crap despite me spending a lot of money on discrete opamps, high quality power supply upgrades etc

Then i purchased an expensive arcam reciever, hoping to get away from all that pc noise from the soundcard, but the arcam turned out to be crap as well.

This very much sounds like you have a ground loop to hunt down in your setup. Presumably you have a TV, network and misc. other things connected to the receiver? You very quickly run into issues in this scenario if you only have unbalanced connections. Would HDMI be an option for you by any chance (either to TV and back via ARC or to receiver directly)? It can be a bit annoying as you always need a picture to go with the audio as well, but maybe as a small secondary monitor somewhere out of the way.

 

[dualazmak]

Even though I am using OKTO DAC8PRO in my multichannel multi-driver multi-amplifier project where I recently provisionally completed the system with three amplifiers, I once got information on another similar 8-channel RCA output multichannel DAC, ESI's Gigaport EX:
https://www.esi-audio.com/products/gigaportex/

Please understand that I know nothing about its measured quality and "sound quality" at all.

 

[andrewjohn007]

Thank you for the lead on the Gigaport! At $199 I may give it a try. I know that the Okto is in a class by itself, but considering the long wait times and the fact that they aren't even taking orders at the moment, makes the Gigaport a nice alternative in the interim. Again, thanks for sharing!

 

[buz]

According to the comments on https://www.thomann.de/gb/esi_gigaport_ex.htm it seems like it is quite sensitve to USB noise :-(

 

[Zoomer]

Have a look at this as well:
https://www.audiosciencereview.com/...sb-multichannel-dac-is-it-asynchronous.17186/

I use a Steinberg UR824 myself, based on recommendations over at the jriver forum. Lots of positive comments from users on musicians' forums too. Never saw any measurements though.

 

[andrewjohn007]

I hopped over to the ESI Gig thread you offered up and just finished skimming the USB connections chart with the footnotes containing differential calculus written in Sanskrit. Then I saw your signature quote... Spot on Mate!

Wow, the UR824 is pretty impressive! Are you using it with PC, Mac, Linux?

It's funny how you could potentially love the Steinberg, love the interface, love the way it plays music and live life fully content, forever and ever. Then ASR pops out a review and you find your world shattered because you overpaid for a POS and have been listening to subpar lo-fi all this time...

 

[dualazmak]

Although I assume it would be out of the scope of john111, let me share with you all about Danville Signal's dspNexus 2/8 and dspNexus 2/16;
https://danvillesignal.com/dspnexus-dsp-audio-processor

 

[john111]

Quite a few studio audio intefaces being mentioned might have to go for one of these rather than a dac, but heard the studio stuff is not really hifi, what do you think, do you have any opinions.
Do you any thoughts on the soundblaster cards mentioned as an alternative. I'm not a big fan of cards seem very sensitive to pc noise and driver issues, although this was 3 years ago when i purchased the asus stxII, hoping there may be some improvements since then.
Many thanks.

 

[BobbyTimmons]

I am purely intrested in sound quality not features, add ons, dsp processing etc
.

All properly functioning DACs sound the same, so what would be the difference between them in terms of sound quality?

 

[dualazmak]

I stll highly recommend OKTO DAC8PRO and/or DAC8 STEREO in terms of sound quality... Please visit amirm's nice reviews here and here on them.

 

[andrewjohn007]

Agreed, they are awesome. However you can't get one right now...

"Due to large amount of orders, we have temporarily stopped taking new orders. Thank you for your understanding."

 

[john111]

It sounds from the lack of comments that soundcards are not popular amongst audiophiles, okay, any more recommendations for a multichannel windows dac. BTW I just paid for a motu mk4 hoping it may work as a good dac, after trying everything i could not get it to work for multichannel from pc, i emailed motu and they said it is not suitable for such a purpose. Gutted. £500 just went down the drain. Apparently it needs multiple sources. Any help?

 

[andrewjohn007]

Oh, the irony...

It looks like we took the same path to disappointment my friend. I picked up a mk5 on Amazon and spent the entire day trying to get sound out of any output other than the headphone jack. A completely frustrating day to say the least. Finally, I submitted a tech support ticket, feeling like a complete jackass. That is after I researched every possible source of relevant info available and triple checked every option and setting.

Have you checked out JRiver as a method of enabling your mk4 to produce multichannel sound?

If I don't get a favorable response from Motu, I am boxing the unit up and returning it for a SB X7. It may not be top flight quality, but at least I know it will work.

Good luck and please keep me posted!

 

[andrewjohn007]

Well after ten, twelve maybe fourteen hours of troubleshooting, I finally got the mk5 working on my MacBook Air. I reinstalled the software package and was able to get some decent 5.1 sound pretty quickly without too much tinkering around. It sounds fantastic. I presume that the capabilities would be the same on a PC, so if you throw in the towel on the mk4, I wouldn't hesitate recommending it...