On Sat, Nov 22, 2003 at 09:23:26AM -0800, Wolfgang  S. Rupprecht wrote:
> 
> > Another option you can try is USB speakers or headphones.  That way the
> > audio is sent digitally and is less susceptible to electrical noise from
> > the bus.  I have a pair of hand-me-down USB speakers that work very well
> > from NetBSD.  The only problem I encountered is that while playing audio
> > there seems to be latency for the controls.  So if I turned the volume down
> > in xmms it would not be immediate, and the delay was psychologically
> > distracting.  I don't know if this is specific to my model of speakers, or
> > a problem in general.
> 
> I'm not sure if that would allow me to play dvds.  If the audio delay
> were too long (and unpredictable) it would be hard for mplayer
> et. al. to synchronize the audio and video.

Read what he said more carefully: latency for the _controls_, which are
actually separate USB features from the audio device itself.  I use a
Griffin iMic as an audio output device to play MPEG and Windows Media
files all the time -- no problems to report as yet, and the iMic has
really great output quality.

I also have a JVC surround receiver that has direct USB input using a
Burr-Brown DAC that appears as a standard uaudio device.  I don't usually
use it for AV playback but again the output quality's quite nice and the
amp was cheap, well under $300.  It's a JVC 7010; I think the equivalent
current model would be a 7030 or 8030.

Thor