Hello,

I'm sorry if this is a repeated question but I get so much information when I try to seek so I thought perhaps there is some kind of executive summary

I am merging my stereo and home cinema into one HTPC thingy. Previously, I had a decent stereo setup with a Squeezebox, separate DAC and a good amplifier from Musical Fidelity, and so on. Besides that, I had a separate surround system of lower quality.

I now would like to let my HTPC do both movie and music, without compromising audio quality. I want DTS and DD etc but the focus is on stereo, I really like good hifi sound. I intend to use Vista Media Center and nothing else. My music collection is already ripped into FLAC (and I've managed Vista to recognize it too .

Obviously, this can be done in two ways. Either let the soundcard do all decoding and output analogue signals to a poweramp. Or output the digital signal to a multichannel pre/poweramp or receiver.

My motherboard has Realtek HD Audio on-board, with digital output (optical).

So. Should I continue using my on-board soundcard and feed a receiver? Or should I get a soundcard and feed a poweramp directly?

I see a lot abount kmixer degrading audio quality, on-board sound being crap, and so on. There are a handful of X-Fi cards to choose from and I can't see what (or even why) they differ. Gaming ability is a plus but absolutely not necessary... so I'm totally confused. I don't want to spend a lot of time and money building my HTPC setup only to be disappointed with the sound, compared to what I had before...

So, any advice is appreciated.. I guess my question can be compressed to "How do I get stereo in top-quality using Vista Media Center?"

Regards,
Calle

Hey Calle,

It really sounds like stereo is your focus.

You may want to look at a card like the Lynx L22. Run directly into an amp, this is a very good analog signal. I prefered it over my Birdland Odeon AG dac, and for the $600 or so price I would be hard pressed to think of a similarly priced dac that I would take over the Lynx....there are even reports of people prefering it to some super expensive Audio note dacs.

There was a poster here who bought the Lynx on my recommendation and had planned to run digital to his Lexicon Pre and then into his Proceed amp that powered his Thiels. He tried the Lynx direct and ditched Lexicon.


The L22 also has a digital out that you could use for HT...but I am not a HT guy by any stretch.

THey recently added Vista support.

Is their any difference sonically or support wise with the L22 versus L2B?

Lynx? Come on, this guy is deciding whether or not REALTEK is good enough.

If the digital output of the Realtek works well with your receiver (for both music and movies), I think there's little reason to buy a separate soundcard. I would guess that your receiver already outputs adequate quality analog audio (has reasonable DACs).
One of the reasons to buy a soundcard would be to have Dolby Digital or DTS multichannel realtime output. This would be good if you wanted to play games and have 5.1 digital surround sound through your receiver.

Hi
I have a similar issue in that I have a new Vista Media Centre PC with Realtek on board chip and would like to do same (Music (2.0 or 2.1 and DVD 5.1). Digital output (optical ) goes into a Naim NVi with B&W XT4s + XTC speakers.

Currently considering reripping CD collection using a lossless format to allow me to replay quality
sound.

My similar question is it worth getting a separate sound card? Will it improve the quality a lot?
I tried to listen to 1 or 2 WAV Vs 320kps MP3 versions of same songs and feel I need to continue with this testing to see if there is a difference! (There is a small-ish difference I think)
Cheers
R

The current range of Asus cards is well worth looking at. Amongst others, I have an M-Audio 2496, an X-Fi Extreme Music and an Asus Xonar DX, and the Asus certainly holds its own.