Just wondering if anybody has any experience using the Sound Blaster Live! External USB, Audigy 2 ZS Notebook, Roku Soundbridge, or some other external PC sound card device.

This is my problem. My CD collection is ripped onto my laptop. When hooked up to my stereo going from 1/8" phono jack to my integrated amp's RCA input, I am:

1) missing the bottom octave of bass. Most music has nothing below 40 Hz anyway, but when I listen to my favorite tracks and it's not there, it totally changes my listening experience (when it's deep, it's Mariana Trench deep! Mmmmm...).

2) hearing hum and crackles from the phono jack for quieter songs at higher gain. If I wiggle the phono jack, I can make it worse.

My ideal sound card would reproduce the bottom octave of bass and have a very low noise floor. My integrated amp does not have optical or digital coaxial input.

I'm assuming my HP Pavilion laptop skimps on the analog output stage. I've ruled out the MP3 format as the problem, because I have the same problem playing a CD through the laptop. It doesn't appear to be my 15' RCA cable because I can attach other hi-fi components and not have noise problems (though the RCA output is usually at a higher gain). And it doesn't seem psycho-acoustic, because I can play an identical track A/B between my laptop and my Pioneer DVD player at matched volumes and detect the difference in bass 10 times out of 10 (midbass, midrange, and treble are identical as far as I can tell).

Suggestions?

Daniel, there're various solutions but what I've been using for about three years to feed streaming classical music from my laptop is the Xitel Hifi Link that I paid about $40 for. It takes the digital output directly from the USB port of the laptop, avoiding the internal garbage in the computer, runs it through a DAC and plugs into stereo inputs of receivers that don't have USB inputs. Works fine.

Now that JohnK has given you a good answer, I swoop in with the joke. The bottom octave of bass? Like 1Hz - 2Hz? *rimshot*

Bren R.

You know the joke is bad when the rimshot is all you remember....

Looks good. Unfortunately, I'm not able to find a mass retailer in Western Canada who carries Xitel. I can locate it on Amazon.com and other US websites, but I'm a little too risk adverse to buy something that would be a hassle to return (I don't keep anything I'm not 100% happy with, which tends to be most electronics). I'll still keep my eye out for it.

Mind you, that would also explain why I haven't bought (nor kept) anything hi-fi or home theatre related in over 7 years; I got burned when I bought my Paradigm Titans in 1999, when I thought they were fantastic speakers (from various gushing reviews) and they weren't.

DH