Computers are great for all sort of stuff, like writing resumes, designing CD covers and tweaking photos of your Great Aunt Maude. But they’re typically not great at making audio sound awesome. Most computer audio cards, especially in laptops, are barely passable in terms of audio quality; the sound you get from them is more like your average MP3 player than anything else.

Which is why this Arcam rPAC is interesting. The small USB sound engine is a super high quality headphone amp and audio converter which uses high end audio components to transform computer audio to Hi-Fi quality.  It’s USB powered too, so no extra cables needed, and works with both Mac and PC. You can also output to a standard Hi-Fi system if you don’t want to use headphones.

“The rPAC takes the signal from the computer via USB and re-clocks and de-jitters the signal and delivers it through a low noise output stage direct to your system amp analogue input or via its high quality headphone amplifier.”

The box is priced at $249.99/£150.00.