Send music from computer to Receiver?

Yamaha Cavit series is a sound processor and will do what you want to do. It's not liquid as an upscale amp, but will improve the sound of the most stock soundcard.

It stands up vertically and doesn't take up much space - and looks sleek. Besides having digital outs (ptical and coauxial), it has effects like Europian concert hall, church, Jazz club, etc.

You can tweak it from a computer. It's fun, and looks sleek - not for the high end minded, but will improve the stock.

You can get them at ebay, amazon, and buy.com.

I use Yamaha cavit products. Improvement on stock soundcard for sure, but not as good as a highend soundcard like lynx.

Has non-fiatiguing sound - USB hook up to by pass sound card for better sound. Has pretty good headphone out. Looks slim and sleek by the computer.

Can hook up to a DAC by digital coax or optical, though it has one inside already - pretty good but can do better.

Another possibility is if you want to get a Philips mini system with USB input if you just want small sound - sounds pretty good for a mini (digital amp) - MC-M570.

You definitely want to use a higher-end sound card. I recommend the audiophile 2496 from m-audio. The quality of the pci card vs a usb connection is immeasurable.

i'll second the recommendation of m-audio, their products (both mac and PC) are great!!

http://www.m-audio.com/index.php?do=products.main&ID=adf95efc30b88aba043fa8b83343bfb8 (what a steal, for what you get!!)

I recommend m-audio too. A word of warning, many soundcards with a digital output will resample the signal before sending it out. For example the Soundblaster Extigy resamples 44.1kHz signals to 48kHz. This sounds bad. The m-audio cards don't have this problem. Look for "bit-for-bit digital output" or something like it on their website.

On the question of whether to go with a internal or external card. If you are piping the digital signal to an external DAC then use an internal soundcard with an S/PDIF output. USB interfaces take use up processing power and the sound will skip when the computer is being used intesively (oddly enough scrolling a window is a processor intensive operation). But if you are going to use the analog ouputs of a card then definately go with an external soundcard. It will sound much better. The internal soundcard gets interference generated by the computer.

If you go with a digital out, I've had good luck with jitter reduction devices like the Monarchy DIP. Evidently soundcards don't output the cleanest digital signals.