Ok I can't remember which thread I mentioned this in so I'm just going to throw it in this 'catch-all' thread...

I was talking about wanting to send the music from my computer to my Denon digitally to let the Denon convert it over to analog. Well today I was at Fry's and I picked up a USB Sound Blaster X-Fi. Cost $60 bucks. Simple plug and play action, plug it into the computer via USB 2.0 port and then into the Denon via an optical cord. There is a disc to download as well for advanced features, but it works right out of the box. Now I haven't had time to really tweak it (there seems to be some sort of 'popping' sound coming from somewhere every so often that I need to diagnose and get rid of), but so far I am ultra satisfied!!! I think it was JohnK or possibly FredK that mentioned that the line-level of the headphone jack might be the problem... this might just be the case, but either way this thing sounds freaking AWESOME!!!

If you'll remember I had mentioned that when playing a CD through the DVD player I could barely get the volume up past -10 without requiring some sort of tie-down to keep me from blowing away. On the other hand while the computer was playing I could easily get it to zero, and even a bit higher than that before it really started moving serious air. Well right now I'm at -12 and it's just about all I can take. I haven't done the direct comparison between it and the DVD player yet (I literally just hooked this up 20 minutes ago), but I'm guessing they are dead even with eachother now. And it also sounds all around better to me. I would love to say it's those Denon DAC's at work making it sound so great, but I know there are way too many factors that go into why I suddenly think it sounds better (including volume level) so I'm not even going to go down that road. All I'll say is that I'm extremely happy with it, and at $60 bucks I don't know why I didn't get one of these sooner.

I'm sure you can get a better shuttle if you shell out more cash, but I'm certainly satisfied at this point. So I'll take the savings and run!!! \:\)

Last edited by Micah; 10/25/09 04:19 AM.
My Stuff :

M80's
QS8's
VP150
EP800
Denon 4802
Emotiva XPA-3
Samsung BD-P3600
Sharp 65 Inch Aquos LCD