Syba USB 2.0 DAC 24bit 96KHz plus Stereo Headphone Amplifier

Really superior budget DAC to by pass your motherboard audio or an old soundcard. Especially for mixing, mastering or engendering purposes.

Temporarily replacement for my old audiophile DAC while I shop around. It is fine for gaming and everyday use, sporting a convenient volume knob and a fair price.

This uses the C-Media CM6533 so it's pretty much compatible with everything. Even in Linux you just plug it in and it works with zero tweaking. I don't know if it's just that old or what, but it does use a mini-USB connector, so you probably don't want to lose the one that comes with it unless you still have some around somewhere. It's definitely not the latest and greatest, but most of the "USB soundcards" in this price range have an even older chip that is limited to 16/48 and this goes all the way up to 24/96 which is as much as anyone really needs anyway. Really on the digital side I have zero complaints. On the analog side it is a bit lacking. It uses the fairly common LM358 OPAMP which is nothing particularly special, but shouldn't actually be bad. I don't know enough about filtering and such, but I can tell you that there is definitely a high noise floor with an audible but somewhat quiet hiss when I plug in headphones. It's not enough to be annoying, but it is there. There's also something going on with the output range. It has a switch for treble boost, direct output, and bass boost and I started it out on direct, but then had to switch to treble to get close to a neutral output. It felt a little off and muted in the highs on direct, so there's definitely a not so great filter somewher in there. As an upshot, it does seem to have enough voltage to handle higher impedance with higher sensitivity headphones like the Sennheiser HD650. On most things I had pretty good volume, though a few quieter sources still required an external amp. But for me this is about the coaxial output. If you connect it to an external DAC, then it doesn't matter what the analog section sounds like. Very very few USB "sound cards" (and really not even many PCI-e sound cards) actually have a coaxial output available. For me the analog section is mostly a backup and I think it's good enough as a backup. You're going to need to spend quite a lot more if you want something that's going to beat this when directly driving headphones I think. When I used the coaxial output the sound was just fine. It doesn't do anything to mess with it, so it sounds just as good as the external DAC. And if my DAC ever has a problem I'll just use headphones directly temporarily.