Hey All,
I was wondering about playback from one's computer to an outboard DAC. Is it possible to play FLAC files and take the computer digi out to a DAC?
Yes, that is what i do
I was wondering about if one's soundcard would be outputting the same bitstream when playing FLAC vs raw WAV files, and if there would be any problem with taking the digital out from a computer for FLAC playback via an external DAC.
no issues, winamp does the decoding of the flac to PCM
If it works, seems to imply that there is internal conversion on playback from FLAC to raw uncompressed wav for the digi out, wouldn't it? This seems like a lot of number crunching to do in real time playback.
I run it on a PIII 700 w/ 512rams, generally from a DVD-r or across my 100mbit network and I have zero issues. I make a little autorun script that loads the playlist into winamp.
flac > winamp > audiofile 2496 > lucid DAC9624 > amp > speakers > ears