Gabbar

Thank you all for you reply's. The motherboard I use is a GIGABYTE GA-P35-DS3L with a Realtek ALC888 Audio chip. Since the sound card I use costs twice as much and appears to use much better components, I always assumed that my sound card would sound better. So I never did a Sound card VS motherboard comparison. Also, before my enlightenment on this forums I was under the assumption that the quality of components will have some say on the digital out too. Winst also pointed out that the receiver DAC is doing all the hard work, the computer hardware is not really playing a big role. Nevertheless i will do some comparison this week end. As for Toslink VS Spdif, I could not hear a noticeable difference. Jitter : Not much between Toslink VS Spdif, have to test MB vs sound card. I did try the analog 2 channel out from my sound card to the receiver, and it does sound a bit warmer with less treble that Onkyo's DAC. I am sticking to this setup for now. -Gab

My computer has a on board sound card with an optical out, but I use the optical out on my dedicated HT Claro+ sound card. If I use the optical out, does it really matter if I use the on board card of the HT Claro. In other words does the sound card quality really matter if all it does is a digital out through Optical/Coaxial out. -Gab

Hello everyone, I am not very tech savvy and have tons of questions regarding my new setup. I will start off with the basic ones. I have my receiver connected to my sound card through an optical cable. The sound card is setup to output stereo. Dose that mean the the sound card DAC is being bypassed and the Receivers DAC is being used ? Would I be better off if I use the sound card's analog out. My setup details are in my signature. -Gab