personally i did not want to believe it myself. and being an audiophile i was absolutely blown away! You would need a $10,000+ sound system to hear the difference between HDMI and a VERY nice sound card (Which i have
). Unless you are going to be playing on VERY expensive speakers there is no reason to get a $200 sound card.
That converter actually came with my Diamond TV tuner. also the jack is not a 2.5mm jack so there was no way i could get speakers to go through it. BUT my monitor and i am sure majority do that have HDMI has a 2.5mm and or a optical out jack. So i just plugged my HDMI in to the monitor then used the 2.5mm jack out to my klipsch speakers.