ZoneDymoEven though cadaveca kinda answered it, Im asking you this, what is the benefit of a soundcard if you are going to have the amp do the D to A conversion?
Many motherboards have build in toslink/spdif, why not just use that if you are going to let the amp do the work?

my mobo has a broken toslink!

ZoneDymoSo digital is not just digital?
I mean I have always heard that 100 dollar HDMI cables are bs because 0s and 1s are just 0s and 1s and there are no better 0s and 1s.

The driver may play some sort of role... I'm not sure. What I do know is that there is an audible difference, even over optical. The most notable differences occur when switching from say, a Realtek ALC1150 to Creative CODEC. How, why, who... man I have no idea. I mean, why do you need a driver for your sound card if digital is just pure digital? But you won't get any sound at all unless you have a driver installed....

Also, you can adjust EQ settings within driver and get results over optical. You can change volume, too. How is that possible if no processing takes place? When it comes to PC sound, the idea that the CODEC does nothing for digital audio is very much not true.

AS to the HDMI thing... man... cabling does matter, depending on the length. There are different types of cables, too, so much so that one cable works fine with my PS3 or bluray player, but it won't work at all with my NUC-based mini-PCs. Why... I dunno. How come that cable works fine with some devices, and not others?

cadavecaAS to the HDMI thing... man... cabling does matter, depending on the length. There are different types of cables, too, so much so that one cable works fine with my PS3 or bluray player, but it won't work at all with my NUC-based mini-PCs. Why... I dunno. How come that cable works fine with some devices, and not others?

I have recently learned that the "hard" way. I bought two IPS monitors and wanted to hook them up to both laptops. One came with run-of-the-mill simple blackish HDMI cable and the other I hooked up with "high-speed flat Ethernet 4K, 3D ready HDMI cable ", which I have purchased separately . Well the high-speed cable exhibited weird behavior -> random on/offs the monitor, artefacts like blue and yellow lines from time to time. I swapped the cables and the problems disappeared completely on the affected monitor over a week use on the same "problematic" monitor and it is rock-solid. The other monitor however, started exhibiting similar behavior with the "high-speed" cable. So pretty much I know it is the cable used.

Yeah, I can't say I've run into the whole audiophile thing where an HDMI cable led to better picture...it was on worked, and one didn't, so obviously there are differences in how some cables are made. Knowing which is good, and which is bad... doesn't reflect price in my case. The cheaper cables I bought work better. :P ROFL.