[morose-]

I just bought an HP laptop for a bit of money. I bought the stock, internal sound card (no one really offers many options for sound cards anyway), with the plan of buying a sound card for the PCI slot. What is a good sound card to buy for under around 300$? I'm pretty certain I'm going to buy a Micro DAC... that is, if I'm certain what a DAC is. Whoever answers this, would you mind also telling me exactlly what a DAC is?

 

[bubruelz]

The Micro DAC would probably be a good choice, but look into the indigo as well. I think I am going to get a Micro DAC for my computer as well. DAC stands for Digital Analog Converter. I don't know exactly how it works, but basically, it takes digital 0s and 1s and turns them into an analog audio signal, which in turn gets amplified by an amplifier and gets sent to your headphones. From what I read, you can't go wrong with the Micro DAC.

 

[DLP]

You guys realize if you buy the Micro DAC from Headroom, you still need to buy a separate amplifier, right? All it outputs is a line out signal, which is not suitable for driving headphones.