pshing

i have um1, and also have similar problem. lots of mp3 players cant be play without hiss. i cant bear with it when using any of the mobile phone a source especially. but the lovely part is - it gives lots of details when u plug it to a right source. for my case, a decent discman. that's what i feel...

EMU 1212 or 0404 would be more suitable for female vocal, jazz type of music?

USB better, coz nowadays laptop no longer use PCMCIA already. Few years later may be hard to use back the card if u choose PCMCIA...

Cos i see some china website selling DAC below 100 bucks. Just interested to know more about the quality of the china made DAC. Anyone using those DAC would like to comment?

I found some info on wiki, quite interesting. Can read the section under "Audio quality". http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MP3 "As well as the bit rate of the encoded file, the quality of MP3 files depends on the quality of the encoder and the difficulty of the signal being encoded. As the MP3 standard allows quite a bit of freedom with encoding algorithms, different encoders may feature quite different quality, even when targeting similar bit rates. As an example, in a public listening test featuring two different MP3 encoders at about 128kbps[2], one scored 3.66 on a 1-5 scale, while the other scored only 2.22. Quality is heavily dependent on the choice of encoder and encoding parameters."

My computer is currently using build-in sound card and i cant bear with the noise when i listen to music thru my px200. So i am thinking of getting either a better sound card or a DAC. I dont play game so i dont really need those 3D effects. Around $100 budget, which would give a better quality of sound? I dont intend to get anything more than $150, coz i dont think my earpieces can deliever the sound quality the expensive sound card / DAC can produce. Any suggestion are welcome~ =)