mightymouse2045

I am currently doing some research into both of your suggestions... What sort of price range is the Bel Canto equipment?

HI, I hope this is the right forum for this.... I am wondering given the follwing hardware if a) I am connected in the best possible way b) If there are either external DACS, or dedicated sound cards that would offer better quality sound over the receiver I have. Computer - Asus motherboard supports Digital Coax/Optical S/PDIF, Realtek® ALC892 8-Channel High Definition Audio CODEC, 192kHz/ 24-bit True BD Lossless Sound Graphics - NVIDIA GTX560TI - with following audio support over HDMI: HDMI: available speakers: FL/FR LFE FC RL/RR RC RLC/RRC HDMI: supports coding type LPCM: channels = 2, rates = 44100 48000 88200 176400 192000 384000, bits = 16 20 24 HDMI: supports coding type LPCM: channels = 8, rates = 44100 48000 88200 176400 192000 384000, bits = 16 20 24 HDMI: supports coding type AC-3: channels = 6, rates = 44100 48000 88200, max bitrate = 640000 HDMI: supports coding type DTS: channels = 7, rates = 44100 48000 88200 176400 192000, max bitrate = 1536000 HDMI: supports coding type DSD (One Bit Audio): channels = 6, rates = 48000 HDMI: supports coding type E-AC-3/DD+ (Dolby Digital Plus): channels = 8, rates = 48000 88200 HDMI: supports coding type MLP (Dolby TrueHD): channels = 8, rates = 88200 192000 HDMI: supports coding type DTS-HD: channels = 8, rates = 88200 192000 Receiver - Yamaha RX-V3067 (aka RX-A3000 in the US) with Burr-Brown PCM1796 DACs Ok so the way I have it connected currently is via HDMI from the 560TI to the receiver, and what I would like to know is given the motherboards DAC, are the Yamaha's Burr Brown DAC's definitely better, and whether or not there is a dedicated sound card or external DAC that would offer better performance than my current setup.... Thanks in advance for any assistance