Choose the soundcard for me

[mattkosem]

He could just be going analog into the Rotel. Thats what I would do with a nice card like the Prelude. No sense having that card if you dont use its onboard processing capabilities.

To each his own I guess. It's generally accepted that a quality DAC outperforms the dac on a consumer-grade sound card, and reasonable all the way around. The sound card is in a turbulent environment from an EMI standpoint, especially in higher end computers that consume more power. The power supply is also not dedicated to the device or isolated from other devices, and provides a much poorer source of power than a proper audiophile component has.

His Rotel amp is likely >$1000, who knows which speakers he is running and how much they cost. It seems silly and nonsensical to feed it with a $200 source. An audio system is no better than its weakest link. After hearing the difference between the output on my X-Fi (which is, admittedly, not as high quality as the Prelude) and my DAC, I definitely won't be going back to an internal solution for my D/A conversion anytime soon. I've got an M2Tech Hiface on the way to replace my X-Fi, since it's currently my weakest link and the crap Creative ASIO drivers are so problematic when changing bit and sample rates between 16/44.1 and 24/96 tracks. It's all about the last 5% when you're running high-end hi-fi equipment.

--Matt