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[Captor]

Hi, I am building a new HTPC. And I am wondering what type of outgoing connections is important for me on the motherboard except the USB? I connect my motherboard to an external DAC.

Maybe I will buy a first class soundcard in the future if I can find one that is better then the DAC inside my Audionet Art G2 cd-player that i am using today. But for now I will use that.

So if you can give a tip on a good soundcard as well I am grateful for that too.

So I have 2 questions here: What type of outgoing connections are nice to have and tip on soundcards with a 1:st class DAC. Thanks.

[astromo]

To my mind the DAC that you select for your audio setup is the key. It's as simple as matching the motherboard's output to the available DAC inputs that you've got to play with.

For most mobos that I've seen about the place that generally gives you either USB, HDMI or Toslink S/PDIF. Occasionally you might find a mobo with Coaxial S/PDIF but you'll generally be scratching around, unless you tie in a coax s/pdif to a mobo header using separate hardware.

All sorts of fun trying to work out the best compromise and DAC selection. You can get yourself into all sorts of audiophile considerations but that's not where my head is at.

Oooh, forgot to mention - if you're after more than simple 2.ch / stereo lossless audio, then S/PDIF won't suit. From what I know, it will only work with lossy formats that have more channels on offer than good ol' stereo.

[Arindelle]

I know that there has been tremendous improvements in USB connections in the last couple of years, but strictly my opionion -- I avoid USB connections so the mobo just has to have SPDIF coax and optical -- unless you have chosen the DAC of your dreams already. USB means drivers for Windows, potential compatibility issues, adjusting buffers maybe etc. Not that there aren't very good DACs that can sound very good ... there are. I just like to avoid complications.  So for me, non-USB digital outputs to an external DAC, and just listen to the music.

Internal Sound cards -- probably need drivers again so I'm also not a fan. Although there are high end "interfaces" from Lynx, Sternberg, FocusRite etc. which might suit better for people who are using convolution ,setting up active filters, or need multi-channel to avoid HDMI playback for audio.  I just don't call these products sound cards anymore, but I guess they can be considered such.

There are pros and cons for both coax and toslink; some dacs don't have high-rez sampling support over and above 96kHz or 192kHz (Your Audionet only supports digital inputs for USB and Toslink limited to 96kH). If this is important to you, this could be a consideration. CHoice might have to do with distance, and unfortunately Astromo is right, often you can get a mobo with one digital out but not both. There are choices with min-ATX boards though, the tiny itx things can be limited.

Regardless, there are a lot of high end dacs that seem very pro USB, I just find they can be more problematic when needing native drivers, updating firmware etc. So I look for motherboards with all the options when possible.

[AndrewFG]

On my HTPC I have an HDMI output to feed to a respective HDMI input my receiver.

The advantage of HDMI over SPDIF and TosLink is that it supports HD audio and multi-channel.

[JimH]

Same as Andrew here.  I use HDMI whenever possible.