HT Omega Clario II

If I am correct, those speakers have sound processing in them. So any card/optical port into the speakers is going to sound pretty much the same.

I would not think you are going to hear an appreciable difference by connecting a high end card with those speakers.

Really? So you're saying that having speakers like mine will almost render the Clario II a waste of money?

If you are using the optical port, no. The speakers are going to process the light into audio. So everything happens on the receiving end.

If you are going to use analog connections then it might be worth your while, it might not. Depends on your ears. It is very highly possible that you cannot detect a difference between middle of the road audio and high end. Especially if you don't listen to the two sources back to back.

If you are currently using optical out of your computer and into the z5500 speakers then i would save your money. You are already on the upper percentile of gaming sound. Any difference in quality would be hard to notice, if even perceptible.

When you use digital, the soundcard isn't doing much audio processing. Some component at the other end of the chain [in this case, the speakers] will be responsable for converting the digital signal to analog. As a result, I recommend hooking up the Z5500's via analog, and not optical.

Back to the soundcard: Quality/features are about the same as the ASUS Xonar D2(X) and Auzentech Meridian 2G. The main problem with all three cards is how hard they are to recommend over the cheaper ASUS Xonar DX.

+1

I would highly recommend hooking up analog and using the DX. It is a very good sounding card. Anything higher priced would need some pretty decent justification, IMHO. And some very discerning ears to note a difference with your setup.

To be fair, different cards are tuned slightly differently, and one may prefer one signature to another. But as far as output quality goes, it is really hard to justify anything over a DX.

When you say analog over digital, you mean not using the "digital optical"? I don't use that, I use the orange, black, and green wires currently and plan to use them as well.

But how does this card rate to the ones you suggested? Just gonna use it for listening to music and gaming. I kind of already ordered it on impulse! I know, it was stupid. But I wanted so bad to put the order in for my case and PSU that I just pulled the trigger. I could always send it back obviously, but just want to make sure if I should, that it's worth it.

It is replacing a X-Fi Fatality (doesn't output 5.1 anymore) so I was just hoping for a nice upgrade.

The HT Omega Clario II is an excellent sound card as is my HT Omega eClario but, everyone is correct when they say you won't notice much (if any) difference over a much cheaper ASUS Xonar DX with the Z-5500's.

I used to have a set of Z-5500's and have since upgraded. I am pretty picky about sound probably more-so than about 99.965731% of computer users so a expensive card was worth it for me.

If you plan to upgrade your speakers in the future the HT Omega Clario II is a good choice. The Clario II will hold its own very well with a high end pair of studio monitors or quality headphones.

Another factor to consider is that HT Omega has more 5 egg user reviews that any other company. Asus has some very good high end internal sound cards on Newegg but they don't even have one 5 egg average user rating among them.

Of the 5 HT Omega's internal sound cards on Newegg 4 have a 5 egg average user rating and the other is 4 egg's

If you read the reviews you will find that the biggest difference between Asus's ratings and HT Omega's is that HT Omega has almost zero driver and compatibility issues.

IMHO almost zero driver and compatibility issues is another very good reason to make HT l Omega your next sound card.