I need a sound card because I want to link my PC via Coaxial to my Yamaha amp. The 2 cards I am interested in is of course the Prelude or Xonar D2.
I understand that the DACs on the soundcards are used to process analogue to digital. However, I want to leave my processing to my Yamaha amp as it is far more superior. And so I have a few questions please:
1) Is Coaxial an analogue or digital carrier? I know this is a n00b question but please read on as I think I have a very interesting point.
Optical cable is digital. So if I link my PC via optical to my amp, then the DACs on the soundcard will be used to process, right?, to convert analogue to digital, send down the optical cable to my amp, for my amp to then process again using it's own DACs. Is this true for coaxial cable too? Is coaxial digital too and so the DACs on the soundcard are used to process from analogue to digital?
What I am trying to get at is my Yamaha amp will do all the processing. It has Burr-Brown 192 kHz/24-Bit DACs. Are the DACs on the soundcard important if the processing is left to my amp? Shall I just get the cheapest soundcard with a coaxial connection instead, and ignore things like DAC quality?
In order to use your reciever as a DAC, you'll have to supply an audio stream that is in Dolby or some other surround codec (prologic II, etc).
Elsewise, your amip will be doing little DAC--this is a good thing; you get much better clarity when you use a digital connection (Coaxial or TOSLINK).
