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Sound card or reciever?

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penixor

Member
Joined
Mar 3, 2005
Location
Oregon
Ok i've been doing a lot of reading, and i mean a lot and i have come to the conclusion that my research has taught me little. I am looking for something to listen to music primarily with so my question is which to go for? I am currently running Klipsch Promedia's through my X-fi Xtrememusic card, I adore the speakers, however I can easily hook up my sattellites to an A/V reciever to use them, BUT I do not know if I can get better sound quality with an A/V reciever with them because they are running analog into my sound card. So if I run a digital in cord from an A/V reciever to my computer and get a reciever that does high quality decode/incoding with either DTS or DDL would that be a better route then going with the new Blue Gears xplosion that allows for real time DTS encoding/decoding.

I am trying to allow my computer to my a multimedia center so this is a question that I have been acheing to ask.

As for the reciever it self I have been eyeing some Harman Kardon's that review quite well because the newer yamaha's people are saying that yamaha is not what it use to be.

So If someone could tell me the best route and possibly the best reciever or sound card depending on what you would want, it would be most appreciated.

Thank you in a advance.
 
the only way that i see it can really sound better is if you were to bypass the amps built into the klipsches and used the recievers amps. but you would also benefit from the new bluegears card as well with this setup due to its ability for on the fly DTS encoding that can be routed thru the SPDIF to the reciever. the recievers DAC will probably be better than whats on the card, but we cant say till we actuually get ahold of one.
 
InfamousHindu said:
A/V receivers will always give you better sound quality then soundcards.
If you're referring to DAC quality, then it would hard for most recievers to beat high end PC audio solutions (EMU, M-Audio, Lynx, MOTU, etc). But generally, yes, this is true.
 
Emon said:
If you're referring to DAC quality, then it would hard for most recievers to beat high end PC audio solutions (EMU, M-Audio, Lynx, MOTU, etc). But generally, yes, this is true.

Well, its depends on what kind of receiver you get, something cheap like less than a $150 probably wont be a noticable difference, but if you get like an Onkyo(like i have), Harman Kardon, Yamaha, Denon or one of those company's that makes good receivers then deffinetly you'll have better sound quality. And also, I just dont htink that computer speakers have quality parts(circuitry mainly) in them.
 
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