The Nuforce HDP DAC/Headphone Amp showed up today. I just got it installed -- without yet switching to the ASIO driver -- and it is a very noticeable improvement. I've not yet switched back and forth between my sound card and the Nuforce, but an initial listen suggests the my Sennheiser HD 650 headphones are finally sounding the way the should (or at least closer). I should have started off here, though the Nuforce only got on the market around the same time I build my computer and it wasn't yet an established device then. And comparable devices out there before the Nuforce showed up where in the $1,000 range.
I was concerned that getting the Nuforce wouldn't get me anywhere, but it seems just the thing my audio set-up needed.
Playing 24 bit 44.1 kHz using windows drivers through the USB port. Not sure where the upscaling from 16 bit to 24 bit happens. I'll take a few days to fight with the drivers. I may try connecting through the optical S/PDIF port as well, but that probably doesn't make sense and might even create more problems.
Now I can notice that my compter fans are too noisy. Actually more annoying than you'd expect...I could swtich down to a less powerful fan setup since I'm no longer overclocking.
Update #1: I got foobar2000 working with the ASIO driver (with L and R channels switched?), but not iTunes. iTunes seems to require some (hacked?) add ons to play through foobar2000 to get to the ASIO driver. And foobar2000 at the moment misses lots of the metadata on my music (like which album a file is on). I'm sure there is a solution to this, but I'll leave that for later.
One thing having the headphone amp points out is how much pop music is mixed differently than classical music.
Update #2: Grr, it appears that using ASIO drivers is actually better than using iTunes without ASIO drivers (and I can't seem to select ASIO in quicktime). At least it sounds that way to me with little testing (and no blind testing). So I'll need to figure out how to fix the metadata problem in foobar2000.
Update #3: time to go to bed, 12:43 am now.
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