[amardilo]

I was looking at building a HTPC to plug into my LCD TV and to run off of my AV receiver .

I have a Sony STR-DE698 7.1 AV receiver and was wondering if buying a Sound Blaster X-Fi XtremeMusic sound card would give me better sound than the onboard 5.1 or 7.1 sound from a motherboard (not picked a Micro ATX motherboard yet).

Is this sound card any good? Any reviews or opinions?

Not sure about that card but from an audio perspective I would suggest the rme9632 if you can stretch to it.

dk

[amardilo]

The most I really want to spend is about £80 thats why I thought it fitted my budget (the OEM version can be found easly for around that price).

I have a seperate CD / SACD player and DVD player so I won't be using the PC to listen to CD's or playing DVD's.

It will mainly be used for listening to the odd MP3/internet radio/podcast, playing video files I download, doing some work, playing some games, surfing the net and reading emails from a distance. I am tired of sitting close to the screen (my main job envolves me being infront of a PC all day).

[boez]

Originally Posted by amardilo

The most I really want to spend is about £80 thats why I thought it fitted my budget (the OEM version can be found easly for around that price).

I have a seperate CD / SACD player and DVD player so I won't be using the PC to listen to CD's or playing DVD's.

It will mainly be used for listening to the odd MP3/internet radio/podcast, playing video files I download, doing some work, playing some games, surfing the net and reading emails from a distance. I am tired of sitting close to the screen (my main job envolves me being infront of a PC all day).

At the risk of re-opening a can of worms, there are many who would argue that if all you are doing is transporting the digital stream from the source (i.e. PC) to the receiver then the on-board codec device is as good as any sound card. Its been claimed that a poor transport will cause jitter and so on, but it then remains could you notice?

Of course, if you were using the analogue outputs of the on-board device then it would be different. Better quality DACs in the sound card would sway the decision.

As you are only using the PC for occassional music and intend to keep using your separate CD player then I'd have though the decision was obvious.

Mind you, a well setup HTPC can easily outperform even expensive CD players if setup correctly (flame suit at the ready!!). Why do you want the keep the separate?

HTH
Andy

[amardilo]

The separate is also an SACD player (which I have now started to buy). Plus I don't want to have to turn my PC (and TV) on and load up software each time I want to listen to some music.

Plus the sound playback I get from my CD player is great imo (well I am comparing it to the DVD player I was using previously).

I really want the best PC I can get and don't want to moan or think if I spent that extra £80 my music/sounds would have been better.

Lastly if I got rid of the CD player my HiFi rack would have an empty shelve! It already has one empty shelve which I can't stand (HTPC to go in that gap).