Catching up to the rest of the world, I recently re-learned a little about digital audio systems that might be of use to readers of this blog. I don’t know about you, but around here we play 100% of our hi-fi music from a computer. If you do this too, and you are playing it straight out of the headphone jack, you might be interested to try a digital to analog converter (DAC) to vastly improve the sound. I recall mention of these in the past and they were really unaffordable, and indeed, there are lots of unaffordable versions around. I found one on Ebay for about $60, shipped from China, and… wow… it really makes a difference in the quality of the sound. Since we play MP3s any improvement in quality of the signal chain is going to be welcome. All of the muddiness and muddled mid-range is gone now. To hear a vocalist take a breath between words or the hear the gentle touch of fingers to strings that was missing in way we used to play music here, is worth this cost.
Basically, in the past we were relying on the built-in DAC of our computer to convert the music to something that the stereo amp could handle, and now we have a better-quality unit dedicated to do this, running through the USB port. If your CD player has a S/PDIF output jack, your sound could also benefit from a DAC, as the built-in DAC of the player is usually a bit of an afterthought.
