Next Step: Desktop Audio

[LiQuId StEeL]

Ok, I am tired of thinking myself in circles, trying to figure out where I should shuffle shit around. For reference, sound quality is my primary goal. My usual listening media is FLAC, ranging from Joe Satriani to symphonic. I don't game that often, and when I do, I disable all sounds, and listen to music.

Currently I am running Optical out from my Asus G1S (Realtek HD) to my Harmon Kardon AVR 146, outputting through Polk RTi4's. In a month or two, I am going to be getting rid of my laptop in favor of a new desktop, and I'm not sure where I should go with the setup.

I am probably going to end up with either a DS3L or IP35-Pro (unless something new comes into that range before I build), which would have optical out. I've seen conflicting comments, either saying that you can send the raw signal through the optical out and have my reciever decode everything, and I've also seen that running onboard will screw over any quality present. Is this possible at all?

I also have my old Audigy 2 ZS lying in my parts drawer, but would that provide any noticable gain over the onboard setup?

Another option would be a new sound card, or a USB DAC. Keeping costs under $200, would there be a noticable gain in the quality of sound with any products? I definitely would want to stick with toslink/coax for connections, though.

This has turned into a ramble, so I am just going to cut it off here. I am just looking for opinions of where I should go.

 

[dandragonrage]

Stay with the same type of setup you're doing now, S/PDIF from the onboard audio. A sound card will give you no benefit. You can do bit-perfect audio with Realtek HD (which is not even important, even though some people try to make you think that it's a necessity... not that I'm AGAINST it, though) and you don't need to touch the poor quality onboard DACs, and you don't use EAX, so....

 

[phide]

I also have my old Audigy 2 ZS lying in my parts drawer, but would that provide any noticable gain over the onboard setup?

I'd probably just use that unless you're using Vista, in which case you might have some difficulties with drivers. It won't sound any better (in practice, anyway) than onboard, but you'll have a larger feature set you might end up utilizing.

Another option would be a new sound card, or a USB DAC. Keeping costs under $200, would there be a noticable gain in the quality of sound with any products? I definitely would want to stick with toslink/coax for connections, though.

There may be, but I can't authoritatively say "yes".