computer to receiver to speaker sound quality?

[freckling]

Hi all,

I was just wondering what the quality would be to run a 1/8 to rca into a receiver to play music on my speakers? My friend is willing to sell me his harman kardon 146 receiver on the cheap, but I'm concerned what the sound quality will be like. My brother played some music from his computer through his onkyo 605 receiver and it sounded pretty bad.

any thoughts on this?

[plaidplatypus]

I've owned an 600 series Onkyo before finding Head-Fi. I found it's headphone jack to be noisy and for speakers it was OK. I don't plan on buying an Onkyo ever again.

I've found that a lot of A/V recivers have better DAC/Pre-amp stages than most sound cards so I would try hooking up the receiver to your soundcard's digital output.

You should ask to try the receiver before you buy it, that way you know what to expect from it.

[Cosmid]

In my rig, a M-Audio Rev 7.1 feeds digital signal to Emotiva receiver, and the D/A board on the receiver convert it to analog signal then feed to amp and hence speakers. The sound quality is top notch. HK 146 has a digital input, so I guess you should be able to set up in the same way. All you need is a sound card that can output digital signal.

[warpdriver]

The sound quality will likely be bad if you are using the soundcard's analog out.

I'm using the soundcard's digital out into my Onkyo and it sounds very good. I would advise you to try using digital out from your soundcard also.