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[PrinterPrinter]

Hello People,
I'm looking to upgrade my sounds card, at the moment I'm using the one on my fanless PC mobo: GA-Z97M-D3H - it has an on board real-tek sound card with an optical out - but won't play 88.2 or 176khz.

I'm using the optical out to connect to a chord Hugo DAC and then a Classe Cap2100 amp and B&W CM10 speakers.

I'm struggling to find a PCIe card that isn't too expensive (around £120) and I wonder if an external USB-toslink card would be better? Will I even notice a performance difference as I'm bit streaming to the toslink and all toslink connections are the same no?

I'd appreciate your thoughts and any recommendations.

Thanks!

[Arindelle]

Just checked your DAC out

Inputs:Optical TOSLink 24-bit/192kHz-capable
RCA coaxial input 24-bit/384kHz-capable
Driverless USB input 16-bit/48kHz-capable (designed for tablets/phones)
HD USB input 32-bit/384KHz and DSD128-capable (for computer/laptop playback; see driver details below)

why not just go SPDIF coax out and save your self some money. The async USB should sound pretty good too. Assuming you spent some big money for the chord's high resolution stuff, the toslink connection is going more limited anyway. Or do you want optical because the htpc is far a way from the dac?

[PrinterPrinter]

Thanks Mate,
I'm using Toslink because it decoupled form the PC noise power supply that's also the recommendation of Rob Watts the Hugo's designer. I'm fine with 24/192.
Also my current onboard audio doesn't support coax...

There must be some decent sound card out there? I do wonder though if having the sound card connect to the PCI via a riser cable will introduce it's own noise to the tousling connection?

[Ben Williams]

How did you get on finding a sound card with 24/192kHz (via optical out)?

I don't know if this will help but I'm using my PC as a source connected to the Chord Hugo via optical out up to 192kHz with no absolutely no problems, however, this is via an on-board sound card that came with my motherboard; a "Rampage IV Black Edition" (Asus).

It's great for now but I'm looking to build a "media PC" that will take on dedicated Hi Fi duties (and will enable me to decouple the gaming PC) so I will have the same problem...

[Ben Williams]

Right, if anyone is looking for a PC audio card then Asus is the way to go.  The Asus Xonar DX PCI-E card provides a digital S/PDIF optical output capably of 24bit/192kHz.  Creative (Sound Blaster) also came back to me but none of the cards in their range can do better than 24bit/96kHz.
 
There's also a company called Quiet PC who provide the Asus DX card as an option with their machines and they also have two fanless media PC's called the Mamba and Lora which have digital S/PDIF optical outputs (capable of 24bit/192kHz) built in (no Asus required).