Right now I'm using the Intel Core i3 built-in sound card to send music PCM directly to AVR for music playback. I would like to know if I were to add in a sound card Xonar or X-FI, would it really make a big difference in terms of AQ by playing through speakers instead of headphone?

xonar would be appropriate if are using the RCA outputs (analogue).... its the expensive DAC's that you are paying $$$ for...

If you are going ti pass audio thru optical or hdmi(digital) then it is wasted

Use i5 to bitstream via HDMI
Save you bucks

yes agreed with ronaldjoe... let the AVR do the processing

Or use USB to spdif with low jitter that should be better than on board spdif.

Currently this is what I'm doing, I already feel the sound is good when bitstreaming PCM to my Denon 2310 DAC to do the processing... I'm just wondering if I were to let the Xonar/X-Fi to do the DAC job, would it sound more interesting?

This post has been edited by echoesian: Jan 3 2011, 12:19 AM

I think ur DENON is way more powderful than an X-FI....price wise also beats it liao... But if you have the budget, can always buy one and try....i would suggest u try to get a Xonar DX/DX2.

This post has been edited by Matrix: Jan 4 2011, 08:53 AM

If we let the Xonar to do the DAC job, we would also need to have a good quality RCA interconnects right??