Will digital output do a difference with my low-end system?

[Noahian]

I had a 15$ philips, earcup headphone i connected to my humble PC.. I was happy.. then it broke..

Then i decided to buy a new one.. And i though i could invest a bit more and maybe have a better experience since i listen a lot..

Looked for better headphones.. Came across amp's.. Did some reading.. Came up with plan A, which was "Chinese ZERO Amp and an iGrado headphone hooked up to my Laptop with its coaxial SPDIF port"..

"Nice" i thought.. "My PC's soundcard is probably lousy.. So if i go digital through SPDIF than the PC will not be able to cause any loss in quality since its digital.. The amp is a dedicated headphone amp with good reviews, so that will not be any bother either..And so, even if iGrado is not a very good headphone, it will be better than my 15$ philips, so i will be happier than before", then i went " And even if later i can efford a Senn HD 650, iGrado will be there for listening on the go with my Nokia N95 and the amp will be hooked up to the Senn.."

Plan A was a nice plan..

But now i read that the iGrado doesn't have to be driven by an Amp by any means... Which means that it is a reasonable option to postpone the Amp purchase to the date when i can buy a Senn 650..

The only downfall is that i will be hooking the headphone to the laptop through the conventional headphone port and will let the lousy soundcard do the A/D conversion..

What i would like to ask is;
"If i just buy the iGrado's, and connect them conventionally, will i sacrifice a lot by letting the laptop (an HP Pavillon) do the A/C convertion?"

I am aware that i may be putting unnecessary amount of thought into such a cheap setup but i have no clue about how the sound may differ with "amp+SPDIF out"..

Thanx for reading this long stuff..

[r@mside]

Plan A looks pretty sound to me and worth seeing through.

While the headphones won't 'need' an amp to drive them, bypassing the noisy headphone out of your laptop will make a recognisable difference.

If you feel reluctant to invest the cash in the Zero, you could look around for a cheap USB soundcard which will have inbuilt DAC and headphone out.