Best soundcard if have outboard DAC

If you've got an outboard DAC and the USB to get to it, as far as I understand it, you're bypassing the onboard soundcard entirely -- so it shouldn't matter what it is (or whether you have one at all). Perhaps I'm missing something, but why not just skip it?

Guess it depends on the DAC. Recently bought a Headroom Total Bithead simply because it sounded like a cool idea. It's an outboard DAC / Headphone amp designed to run off of a computer USB port. It's totally plug and play -- plug it in and it configures itself to run as the default sound card as long as it's plugged in -- thus bypassing the onboard card. I'd previously been using the DAC on my card (which is a decent soundcard) and then running analog into an outboard headphone amp (an older Headroom), but the sound was pretty mediocre. Running USB direct to the Bithead is a lot better -- hardly perfect, but definitely a huge improvement. Perhaps not what you're looking for, but the concept (bypassing the onboard card alltoghether) sounds like the way to go to me....

You need to bypass the Kmixer in a windows based OS. Kmixer upsamples to 48khz, this is a no-no. It does not matter that you use onboard sound or any other device as long as the output is bit perfect. Hence the $10.00 dollar Cmedia solution will output a 44.1khz bit perfect signal to the DAC.

This has been researched extensively by others and myself. I am runing Foobar2K with bit perfect output to my Music Fidelity Tri-Vista 21 DAC. Hope thhis explains it clearly and to the point.

Thanks for the great responses.

Racerxnet: That sounds like the way to go. I use Cinemar MainLobby, which is a front end for J. River MediaCenter. I believe J. River has something like bit perfect output (it has bit perfect ripping).

What kind of connection do you use to the DAC?

I am using a toslink connection due to the distance to the DAC. About 20ft. The PC outputs to the overhead projector and hence the distance involved. There is no signal loss or interference with this setup. Sounds great to me. I am using the PC as a HTPC front end / data Base. Here are the components.

KT 800 AMD PC - WinXP Pro
Electrohome 8500 CRT Projector Via PC output
Music Fidelity Tri Vista 21 DAC
Bryston BP 25 Pre Amp
Infinity Crossover
4 Bryston 7BST monobock amps
Infinity RS1B speakers.

If you must use an internal card (not the best solution), then I believe the Lynx is the best around.