Sound card to external dac/amp

[woox]

A friend of mine suggested that I could get much better audio quality by connectiing a dac/amp combo to a sound card via digital connection (?). I am not very good with audio so I just wanted to make sure about the results before buying anything. Also what digital connection can I make between the dac and the sound card?

Thanks a lot!

[Langdon]

A sound card is a dac/amp so connecting both together would be pointless. Just connect the external to your motherboard audio

[woox]

A sound card is a dac/amp so connecting both together would be pointless. Just connect the external to your motherboard audio

I read somewhere that very few soundcards have amps... and the quality is supposed to be much better.

[ErickS89]

An external Dac/Amp is a better solution as it's isolated from the computer.

They will also tend to have better components as well, but don't go crazy!

[Langdon]

I read somewhere that very few soundcards have amps... and the quality is supposed to be much better.

All sound cards have amps, that's how your headphones get powered. Connecting a soundcard to an external amp/dac is like connecting an engine to a car trailer. Bad analogy but its not needed.

[SSL]

What makes you think you need better quality?

[ErickS89]

 

What makes you think you need better quality?

Maybe he wants a better amp, amps on onboard aren't that great, dolby atmos is pretty cool.

[frozeefrank]

what type of headphones/ speakers are you using ? this is more relevent than having a badass external sound card.

[SSL]

  Maybe he wants a better amp, amps on onboard aren't that great, dolby atmos is pretty cool.

 

Yes, that's why I asked what made them think they needed better quality than what they already had.

[frozeefrank]

audio quality is a hard "thing" to qualify. what is good quality, what is not. good quality for me is a u87 a 192k 24bit. but for someone else, it could be a simple mp3 @ 192kbps.

[handruin]

One way to connect the two is if you use the SPDIF output as a data link layer and transport the audio signal over a TOSLink cable and run it to an external DAC.  In this case your sound card is not doing the DAC, it's transporting it to another device outside the computer to do the DAC.  This can also be achieved with a USB sound card which moves the DAC outside the computer environment.

 

You can potentially get better audio quality this way assuming the audio components you are connecting to are of good quality and the source of your audio is of high quality (FLAC audio files at higher sample rates and bit depth for example).  This is how I run my audio on my workstation.  I use the SPDIF optical output and run that to my Marantz AV7005 receiver to do the DAC.  My AV7005 drives a pair of self-amplified Emotiva Airmotiv 4 monitors and a Power Sound Audio XS15 subwoofer.  This moves the audio processing outside and away from the noisy computer environment and also allows me to do better bass management and room correction.  I can also have the receiver/DAC decode higher bitrates like 96KHz 24-bit etc whereas the internal sound card probably can't.  The DAC also supports things like 7.1 decoding, etc if you're into that sort of thing but you might need to move to an HDMI cable to get the better audio of a bluray for example.

[SSL]

audio quality is a hard "thing" to qualify. what is good quality, what is not. good quality for me is a u87 a 192k 24bit. but for someone else, it could be a simple mp3 @ 192kbps.

 

That's why the term "fidelity" is used a lot in audio, it is somewhat less subjective.