USB DA recommendation needed

I actually don't think that it is a Mac core audio problem since my Griffin iMic works just fine in all applications. It just doesn't sound as good.

The m-audio I had was a firewire card. M-audio tech support was trying to be helpful, but besides "reinstall everything" they couldn't come up with much. The kernel logs clearly indicated that the m-audio driver was crashing.
:-(

That is strange, b/c I thought musicians favored the Mac environment, so I figure they would have given more attention to that context. My Sonica hasn't given me any issues on my XP system.

Lots of good DACs in the $300-$500 range--stuff changes so fast that you can pick up state-of-the-art digital gear from a couple years ago for peanuts. I like Theta, and picked up my Pro Basic III for about $500... I used to run it with a Chroma, which also sounded OK, but a bit thin. I'd stay away from the Progeny.

Don't know what I did, but I tried it again tonight and it is working beautifully.
Wow -- having a DAC outside the computer makes a really nice difference.
Increased dynamics, air, detail, musicality -- the works. Now, if it sounds THIS good with the M-Audio USB Audiophile DAC, I wonder how much better
the Apogee would sound......

I'm sick I tell you.

But seriously, with this kind of device, I'm more convinced than ever that
hard drive is THE solution for music storage. You can rip a huge collection of CD's to a hard drive uncompressed, play them through an external DAC and get CD quality music. This sounds better than my old Yamaha s2300 Universal player, which is a $1,000 player. It would take a pretty serious CD player to beat this set-up. And -- that's with this $175 DAC.

yes, the sound is superb!

Does it work with mplayer?

Also, I checked the m-audio website. The audiophile USB is supposed to work with core-audio in OS-X. Thus no drivers should be needed for USB audio out. Is that true ?
Any more crashes?

Thanks!

I installed the drivers, but I read in several places that the drivers were not needed. My next step was going to be to remove the drivers I had installed.
First I turned my computedr off. Next, I connected the M-Audio DAC and powered it up. Then, I turned the computer on and booted it up. Under system preferences -- sound -- output -- I select M-Audio. Then, under general system preferences, I also have an M-Audio logo. I clicked on that and chose Analogue output by checking the box next to it and taking the checks out of all the other boxes. Then, I checked the box marked 24 bit. Now, it works beautifully -- no more crashes. Not sure what I did that was different from before or if it just took turning the computer on and off a certain number of times before it straightened itself out. I'm not sure whether the driver was necessary, or not. It sounds really good. Big improvement.