Onboard digital vs Soundcard digital

[Steves_pc]

Currently i just use the onboard coaxial output into a 7.1 amp, does the job nicely but wondering if theres a quality improvement with a seperate card ?
Kinda thinking as it's digital info anyway there shouldnt be much change - or am i barking ?

Analogue doesnt matter as all i use analogue for is windows pings & dings etc through those ickle speakers in the monitor so sounds carp anyhow.

Is the truth out there

 

[Steves_pc]

Anybody ?

Any thoughts at all

 

[Steves_pc]

Thats what i thought, just wanted confirmation really.
Bang goes the excuse to buy more hardware

Cheers

 

[Steves_pc]

I do a little gaming, probably spend little more than a couple of weeks in a whole year playing games, I remember a couple of games a year or so ago that did surround and yes it added to the atmosphere but i cant justify it just for the sake of games and to make matters worse i cant even stand the surround "effects" that my amp can do with 2 channel audio so mostly the upmixing of DD Live would be told to sod off and leave my music alone
Although if it did add a bit more life back into to say mp3's that didnt compress too well than that may make it worth considering but only if it stick it out as digital afterwards.

I didnt think there were any motherboards that supported DD Live? well not yet anyway,

If you have a VERY good sound card surely the DAC on that would be better than most PC speakers with Optical in therefore using the analogue connections is still the best choice.

Probably, so long as the analogue input/amp of said speakers is of good enough quality, and doesnt end up adding loads of hiss etc that the DAC tried so hard to avoid.

Even if you had DD Live, unless you have a good seperates system with AMP, analogue is still preferred is it not?

As for DD Live even if i had a cheapish surround amp/decoder i would imagine that to still be better with a digital input than any analogue, unless it was a real budget brand like Bush or Alba fortunately mines a Marantz SR something with a wee pair of TDL RTL3's and whilst not as audiophile as i would like it aint too shabby and the only time analogue is probably a must is for vinyl.