[nikko1974]

Haha yes....its a very convoluted area isn't it.

I know what you're talking about in particular Creative's cards were known for resampling all 44.1khZ material to 48khz. If you're using MCE2005 I don't know if you can get around resampling with any card........as audio will go through WMP and I think that resamples too? I know the people who use the Chaintech tweak have to use FooBar 2000 and use a setting to get 'bit-perfect/kernel streaming' audio- haha or something like that.

I have read a lot about the vaunted Chaintech's......and that tweak you can do to them.

I mean just keeping it simple...does it seem logical that an onboard soundchip - that sells for a few dollars each is able to put out EFFECTIVELY the same audio quality as a soundcard costing $100 or so?

It doesn't seem logical.....I mean thats just when I look at it from that very, very simplistic perspective.

When I've tried to raise this on other forums the thread is seized by gamers who will swear onboard sound is rubbish and you need a dedicated card.....which from what I read for games may be the case.

I'd have thought the DAC's on a decent current soundcard would be better than on a mid level AVR.

Is bloody complicated...hence I've done nothing and kept using my onboard via SPDIF.