New PC Sound Card, internal or external?

[Puffin]

Hi Kevin,

I have had a great couple of hours playing with some of the sample rates available now. Such a simple thing to do and as you say FREE!

I have sampled so far 24 bit 352.8/ 24 - 192/ 24 - 96khz. When using the 352.8 it started playing up and said that it could not play any of the tracks I had selected. To my ears the 24/96 seems the cleanest.

Something I don't understand is that the sampling rate light on the Zen suggests that I am getting DSD 64/128 which clearly cannot be right?

[CageyH]

If you have not installed WASAPI or AIO drivers, then Windows may default to DSD.
If it sounds good, I would not worry about it.

[Puffin]

Having spent a few hours attempting to educate myself about streaming etc I have found some interesting info which I assume is correct.

I found the details on the PC as to what Windows says is what is happening to my stream from Spotify :-

Preferred ASIO
Format 2 ch 32 bits, sample rate 384khz,
Input latency 4400 samples 11.67ms
Output latency 5184 samples 13.50ms

On another forum I have been told that Windows will resample to whatever you ask it to. ASIO will output a bit perfect stream at the same rate as your source.

Does this sound right? My head hurts a bit

Incidentally I have found that 24/192khz sounds best to me and the DAC says that it is receiving DSD?

[CageyH]

I think Windows outputs DSD by default, so it sounds correct.