[erratik]

Are the two terms interchangable as far as listening with headphones is concerned?
 
Going to be doing some upgrading this summer and after the sound card and headphones, will be looking at amps and DACs. 
 
But my step dad has a spare receiver laying around, an Onkyo TX-SR703.  Would acquiring this do a good job of what i would normally purchase an amp and DAC for?

 

[Ypoknons]

No. A stereo receiver these days is typically an integrated speaker amplifier with a radio tuner (they usually have a decent headphone out by stepping down their speaker amplifier). A DAC does the same job as a sound card, and converts digital music information (computer audio, CD players... practically everything except vinyl) into analogue, the difference being that sound card usually refers to components inside a computer.
 
The Onkyo is a home theater receiver. It does many functions, including DAC and amp, decoding 7 channel information and sending that to speakers, amplifying 7 speakers and so on... The problem is that whilst it's better than nothing, a home theater receiver really is more orientated towards powering 7 speakers, money is spent on so much other features other than headphone amplification ... like the other 5 channels and digital processing. It's better than no amp/DAC but in all likelihood it won't be as good as a dedicated headphones setup.
 
A headphone amplifier is a different animal from speaker amplifier.

 

[erratik]

I see.  Thanks very much.