A USB DAC+amp seems like the right answer if you don't want to break out the soldering iron and don't want to buy an Apple product. I just don't think makers o

A USB DAC+amp seems like the right answer if you don't want to break out the soldering iron and don't want to buy an Apple product. I just don't think makers of commodity hardware have much incentive to spend money on good audio circuitry. But if their USB ports didn't work, well, that would be a real problem. I have an earlier model of this: http://www.schiit.com/products/fulla-1 http://www.schiit.com/products/fulla-1 that delivers good audio quality (to my non-audiophile ears). The one I have is not perfect: there's some static when you turn the volume knob (maybe a good design tradeoff at the price, I don't know), and the metal edges on the enclosure were sharp enough that I took it apart and filed them down a bit (others might not have been bothered by this, but I was). But there sure isn't any background hissing like there is with the built-in headphone jack on my Dell workstation.