Soundcard with AV Centre?

[Yeungster]

I know there's been a lot of threads already asking whether it's worth buying a soundcard over onboard sound, but..

..mine has a slight twist. I'm connected to my home hi-fi seperates surround sound system using my motherboards s-pif optical connection.

Will I still notice great improvements if I buy a soundcard and run s-pif through that?

 

[Joe]

I know there's been a lot of threads already asking whether it's worth buying a soundcard over onboard sound, but..

..mine has a slight twist. I'm connected to my home hi-fi seperates surround sound system using my motherboards s-pif optical connection.

Will I still notice great improvements if I buy a soundcard and run s-pif through that?

actually Dolby Digital and DTS 5.1 live spdif solutions actually compress the audio further and cause artifacts .. but the noise they output is usually well defined passing 5.1 thru normal 5.1 sounds cards will be pretty good as long as the SNR is good