I have been using my Kef Wireless 2 for a year now. I love them and use Deezer and Spotify Connect most of the time, and connect my PS4 gameplay sound via a PC monitor’s aux output.
Also, my family members are using the speakers but they are not on to quality, and they are very happy to connect it easily to play their playlists from mobile apps.
Now I ordered a Kc62 subwoofer and I am searching an upgrade for sound quality if it’s possible. I already use the highest quality on streamers yet, I believe it is limited to CD quality. Also, have a slow internet connection, my max speed is around 10 Mbps and there is no chance of having a better connection. I experience lagging while using online streaming most of the time.
I thought I could use my PC to pre-download albums as a 24-bit/192kHz file, use a USB-A to aux DAC, and plug it into the speaker. But I will have a complex DA/AD/DA conversion.
I would go with the Roon but as I told you my internet speed is my biggest problem.
Do you recommend a better idea or if it is best to do so, which DAC + Aux cable do you recommend?
For the moment I think your addition of the KC62 will make a considerable improvement to the SQ.
Have a long listen to it before you consider further changes, in the meantime the following thread may be of interest…
If you connect your KEF LS50 wired to each other (instead of wireless), the internal dac supports up to 96kHz/24bit.
You can then connect your PC directly via USB (if distance permits). Different free (or almost free) music players can be used, such as Foobar, JRiver, …
And you will still be able to stream music from your mobile devices.
I would try this first to see how you like the improved sound.
The internal DAC supports 384kHz/24bit from streaming sources…but:
When Kef LS50 Wireless II speakers are connected together via ethernet, they resample to 192kHz/24bit PCM.
When connected together wirelessly, they resample to 96kHz/24bit.
Both are better than CD quality.
Finally, there is no USB in for music (just a service port).
Adding an external DAC is unlikely to be an improvement, although the integrated nature of the product means that it is hard to measure the DAC in isolation and therefore confirm that it is SOTA.
The corrections @ExUnoPlura shared are accurate. It’s a good thing they got here before I did, since I would have provided misinformation. I have a couple pairs of LS 50 IIs and a single pair of LSX IIs. The LSX IIs sit on my desktop where they are connected, via a USB-C cable, to a Mac Studio. I assumed, without checking, that the LS 50 II also supported USB input but @ExUnoPlura is absolutely correct about it not doing so, though it has a USB-A port on the rear panel.
This means that if you want to connect directly to a computer, you’ll need to explore a USB to either coax or toslink adapter, including understanding what resolutions those approaches support.
I wonder, though, about what you’re saying about your internet connection. 10 Mbps should be sufficient for CD quality audio (typically around 1.4 Mbps). Is your primary KEF speaker connected to your network via wired or wireless? If wireless, it’s worth testing wired to explore if the issue is possibly your home wifi network and not your internet connection.
It’s hard for me to believe that you’ll experience an increase in sound quality by using an external DAC. As you’ve already noted, the speakers are going to digitize the input, run it through the internal sound processing pipeline, distribute the processed audio to the secondary, and go from there. It’s hard to imagine that any real improvement will come from this.
If you’ve already used KEF’s app to adjust for distance from wall, size of room, dampening of room, etc., and you don’t like the sound of the speakers, then it’s probably the speakers (and not their internal DAC) that aren’t working for you. If they’re not working because of a shortage of bass, or some other bass-related issue, then a sub might help. But they just might not be the right speakers for your application.