[cycheang]

The sound card I owned is about 10 years, plan to do the upgrade. Current setup is from my sound card to Bose Soundtouch 300 (sound bar) via optical cable.
I had tried to bypass the soundcard and using HDMI from my Asus Graphics card to SoundBar, the sound quality cannot beat if I connect from my sound card.

If I were to upgrade my current sound card, should I upgrade to something else like DAC ?
I'm really new to these DAC + Amp thingy.

Please advise.

 

[Pharmaboy]

The sound card I owned is about 10 years, plan to do the upgrade. Current setup is from my sound card to Bose Soundtouch 300 (sound bar) via optical cable.
I had tried to bypass the soundcard and using HDMI from my Asus Graphics card to SoundBar, the sound quality cannot beat if I connect from my sound card.

If I were to upgrade my current sound card, should I upgrade to something else like DAC ?
I'm really new to these DAC + Amp thingy.

Please advise.

I'm not up on soundcards anymore. Does the 10 year old one do amplification for the headphone, as well as digital conversion?

I gave up on soundcards long ago. Never got good sound, not to mention swapping them was very difficult, lots of computer issues resulting. I changed to an external DAC 8-9 yrs ago, never looked back. That was before headphones so I didn't need a HP amp. And because I had powered monitors in those days, all I needed was a passive volume control to take output of the DAC and send it to the monitors.

System is far more complex now. But still have an external DAC, also a number of headphone amps, several of which also have linestages.

Maybe there are internal/external high-end soundcards I don't know about. Maybe you can get soundcard sonics equivalent to external devices. But I doubt it.

 

[cycheang]

I'm interested in external DAC but i need some recommendation. Which model should i goto that will boost my current setup ?

 

[vipervick]

I'm interested in external DAC but i need some recommendation. Which model should i goto that will boost my current setup ?

The Schiit Modi 3 does a great job at $99 USD.