This is my media player... Basically a computer in a Silverstone HTPC case with a built in 7" touchscreen LCD, and using an Asus Essense STX with 3 Burson OpAmps.
Had a colleague do the OPA swap for me as the Burson OPA pins don't really fit that well and I have zero skills in electronics and soldering... After various experiments, he think this is the best way.. And so far so good.
Apparently changing those gold Nichicon caps to ELNA (IIRC) will change the sound with more weight in the midrange, but I have no idea how to do that... :p
This card also has it's own power input (not drawing power from the PCI-e bus I think).. But as usual the Computer PSU isn't terribly good power source. When there's a ground loop in the setup the high pitch switching noise from the PSU will creep in...
In time I will try to figure out how to add a 2nd power PSU to feed this card, and see if the switching noise will leak out.
2 more OPAs at the back... Just touching the CPU heatsink.. Amazingly there is no hiss, well nothing I can hear anyway
...
The Operating System I'm using is Linux, playback software for now is something call XMMS (Looks like Window WinAmp)... Will try other software in time.
All my music files are stored on a NAS, the lower right black box below. Most are MP3s, but I will convert what I have now to FLACs in time.
Technically this isn't a transport as I'm using the card's DAC (the PC with a custom built kernel is the transport)...
With this card it's best to use Linux I think. As of this writing the Windows drivers is pretty sh!tty.
Still a work in progress... So far, the verdict is - using a computer really isn't a good idea...
Not yet anyway..
