Do I need a sound card?

Here's my, soon to be, new setup: Sandy Bridge PC outputting audio, via HDMI, to my AVR (Denon 1712) output to my speakers and headphones (Ultrasone PRO 750 and probably a Sennheiser HD 598), and video out of my SLi graphics cards, via DisplayPort, to my monitor. As far as I'm concerned this should be fine for movies and games because I can bitstream DD, DTS, Dolby True-HD , and DTS Master Audio to the AVR and let it handle the decoding, DAC, and output. Music's going to be a whole other issue unfortunately because I can't bitstream MP3s, AAC, or FLAC to the receiver and let it do the decoding; so that's going to have to be handled by the PC.

So I'm curious: Do I need a soundcard? Would a good card provide superior audio decoding over the motherboards onboard chipset (ASRock's Extreme IV Z68 board)? If I do get a card what would you recommend?

I was considering HT Omega's eClaro because it has a dedicated headphone amp so I thought perhaps I could go straight out of the card to my cans. Or would it be better to output the digital signal out of the card to my AVR, let it do the DAC, and then plug my headphones into the receiver?

Ok, I've done some research and think I have a solution. Would a USB DAC provide what I'm looking for? For some reason I was under the impression an internal sound card was necessary for use with an external DAC (the sound card doing the decoding, the DAC doing the digital to analog conversion). The way I understand it now though is all internal sound hardware is ignored and the USB DAC is the sound card when used. So if I pick up something like a Fiio E7 will it bypass the mobos crummy onboard sound?

Quote:

Originally Posted by Koolpep 

Yes, a soundcard is a DAC. So the Fiio E7 connected via USB will act like a soundcard.

 

Good choice Ultrasone Pro750 and Sennheiser HD598. I have both and they are the "dynamic duo", Batman and Robin. ;-) You won't be disappointed with these two.

Alright thank you very much. I was looking for an excuse to get a DAC and a dedicated headphone amp anyway so this gives me a reason to pick up an E7/E9 combo and solves my current biggest issue with PC audio.

And yes the Ultrasone's are awesome, they were my first venture into HiFi four years ago and I love them. I have high hopes for the HD598