Send music from computer to Receiver?

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.

This could be a great answer at $99 for some. http://www.griffintechnology.com/products/powerwave/. Many features and digital amp.

Dave