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Thanks, jtavan.

It was educational. I made some first steps already. I made a slow 233MHz (and presumable it would have lower noise with lower speed) machine with no fans, and a large passive radiator on SPU. Formatted it and loaded Win2K Pro St4. Shut down all unnecessary services. I was looking for a card with SPDIF (RCA and optical) in and out and was not able to find any without the dummy multimedia options, Dolby, DTS and 65433 channel/54 subwoofers. :-) Considering that I need only the optical I/O bypassing everything else then why do I need anything else?

Eventually, in my local pro audio shop I found a very reasonably priced card. It was by Creative Professional, 24/96. It called E-MU 0404, has optical and RCA in and out and it looks like it was not made to please the “gaming” community.

http://www.creative.com/products/product.asp?category=237&subcategory=239&product=10498&nav=2

It is juts $100 and it comes with a bundle of Steinberg's software, including the Wavelab. Since it is juts a first sound card the I even bought in my live I have no idea how good it is bad it is and I figured then the less it will have bult on itself the better it will be, it is had no DSP engine and no onboard DAC/ADC it would be even better…

Anyhow, I tried to load the stream from my transport directly into the Wavelab via my favorite coaxial digital cable. The wile I made was PCM, uncompressed 16/44. When I played it back form my PS’s hard drive, I was kind of surprised as I expected much-much more unpleasant result. To my astonishment the sound was very similar with what I was getting form my transport. I did anticipate an immediate revolting reaction but it was very opposite – I had no reaction at all. I would not finalize my observations as this point as I still have to learn how to use all this digital gismos and optimize them. Also, the electrical was very bad today in Boston and the general sound was not at the point what I would be able to say anything more defiantly.

What I did learned is the I need a smalls flat monitor with touch-screen as I can locate a silent computer hear my audio in my room but I will not be able to tolerate any keywords or mice…

To be continue
The caT

PS: Interesting that the software that the card comes with has any ability to bypass the DSP engine by mapping the inputs/outputs. The fan part the when I go into the DSP engine and explicitly shot shut down ALL activities and then rout the digital streams in the DSP engine, without doing anything in the engine then the sound instantaneously go to hell and begin to sound like the playbacks of those cretins who use digital crossovers with this horns. Very-very recognizable!

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