Sager 9262 headphone setup questions

I'm having a little trouble with my current headphone setup ( 500 gb external hd=>Sager 9262 digital output=>Zero 24-bit 192KHz DAC=>Little Dot MKV=>AKG K701 ). Sometimes there is noticable popping at certain parts of songs I'm listening to, and this is present even when I pause the player. Other than this occasionally noticable problem this setup sounds great. Is this a problem with the output from the sound card? Also, I'd like to bypass my soundcard altogether and just send a pure digital signal to my external dac. If I want to output pure digital through the usb, what would I need? I remember seeing a usb to spdif or coax converter on ebay once, but it's not there when I search now. I will definitely dole out some rep for whoever can help me out here.

 

bump^^^^^^

 

You can just use the SPDIF out to bring the sound to a receiver.

you just need:
- a 3.5mm mono to RCA female adapter
- one RCA cable

i went over it here:
http://forum.notebookreview.com/showthread.php?t=185631
and here:
http://forum.notebookreview.com/showthread.php?p=2017081
and here:
http://forum.notebookreview.com/showthread.php?t=194966

you can only use SPDIF if you are connecting it to a digital 6 to 8 channel receiver.

you can use a 3.5mm to RCA mono.

a setup like this:

http://www.ramelectronics.net/html/RCA-mini-spdif.html
$16

OR

you can get a cheap 3.5mm to RCA female cable, and just use a basic RCA cable from that to the receiver

$2.50

 

That's what I'm using already, but I want to bypass the soundcard's dac altogether by using the usb and converting to coax to go into my external dac through the digital input that looks like a female rca. I think it may improve the quality from what I've read, but then again I don't know much about soundcards, or if the popping I've heard is the fault of the soundcard in this case. Maybe it's because I'm sending the signal through 2 dacs in the current config? I have no idea. I'm using only flac files from an external hard drive.

 

using USB... is using another soundcard.

Might as well get an external/Expresscard soundcard... like Sound Blaster X-Fi

Or if you are listening to mainly music and movies (get a pro-audio soundcard).

I have 3 sound cards, one for my PCMCIA (Audigy 2 ZS) for gaming, two external M-Audio (USB & firewire) soundcards for audio editing and streaming.

 

So there is no way to output a pure digital signal that hasn't gone through a dac? I really want to use the stand-alone dac I already have, and my MKV amp, without having a processed or preamped signal before them.