USB DA recommendation needed

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.

Does it work after sleep?

Would you mind trying it without the drivers? I dont want to waste $ on shipping stuff back and forth again.
maybe m-audio has an answer...

Hi, I used a IBM laptop with 40GB HD and a M-audio Sonica theater for digital output. I compare it to Theta Data II transport (cost $2800 years ago) and Theta sounds way better. I would like to know if Audiophile USB or any other USB sound card digital output would be comparable to a good transport. I really want to use laptop + USB sound card as transport for digital source..

My system is Theta Pro Basic II DAC, ARC LS15 pre and Aragon 8008 Amp, NHT 3.3.

Thanks.