Man you all got me thinking now. I was just using the HA Info USB to SPDIF converter
HA INFO USB to Coaxial (S/PDIF) Converter External Sound Card fromMy thought process was by using this I could use a decent USB cable and then use my better Digital Coax cables before feeding my system. Sorry I'm not a believer in big dollar USB cables yet. Now from looking at the specs HA Info may be lacking.
Description
It's a extra small sized USB to S/PDIF (Coaxial) Audio Converter.
Plug and Play without additional driver.
Compatible with Windows 2000, XP, Viata, Mac OS X and major Linux distributions.
USB input and digital audio output. Can be used on a PC/Mac as an external sound card to drive your DAC/MD/receivers.
USB Powered
Output waveform is very nice and neat!
Note: This converter doesn't support multi-channel format such as 4.1, 5.1 and 7.1.
Specification
Audio codec chip: Burr-Brown PCM2902E
Sample Rate: 16bit / 32K, 44.1K 48K
Input: USB-B (Square)
Output: S/PDIF Coaxial (Stereo)
Color: Black / Blue (Please specify)
Dimension: 80mm x 25mm x 25mm
If you are going to sell that M2Hiface adapter let me know.
Also what kinds of USB cable are you using? The quality of Tripp Lite, Belkin and even Dynex USB cables surprised me. Could it maybe be an issue with the USB connection on the laptop too?