I totally agree with you on this. Actually analog can sound better than digital.I have read that even 24/96 is not as good as 1/2 inch tape.
Eh? Not to sound confrontational in such a friendly forum (hope I'm not), but I've read a lot from "audiophile" publications and sites, and I think 90% of it is bunk, even in the most popular publications. This analog/digital thing seems to me a battle between romantics and cold-hearted geeks. The best way to assess reality is being as dispassionate and neutral as possible! Something akin to this has also raged for years now in digital photography. Digital formats, especially the current "high-res" technology (not talking about 1983 CD's) has far surpassed analog, in my opinion.
Anyway, that said, I also agree with Samuri that in current circumstances analog audio has very good potential compared to S/PDIF, but you do need a nice card and also (I'm about to test how important these are - see below) good interconnects. The speaker wire, on the other hand can be cheap as long as it's short/thick enough. Don't buy into the expensive
speaker cable!
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About my interconnects (hope this helps someone, go and build yours too!):
I'm about to build interconnects (got 100ft of Belden 1505f cable and Canare RCA connectors). The cost of a 6-ft stereo RCA cable would amount to about 21 bucks, which is not too shabby considering that it's high-quality coaxial cable, yada yada... I've been using the multichannel cables that came with my Cambridge Soundworks 6.1 system and my Creative DDTS-100 decoder I bought bundled with them. From HTPC 5.1 analog to switch, from switch to sub/sat speakers (analog), and from big PC S/PDIF to decoder, then to switch then to speakers. The final cable run for the HTPC was pretty long and it's a mess of other cables and AC plugs underneath the table. But it
wasn't that bad.
I recently put those speakers to bed and got 4 Definitive Tech Studio Monitor 350's and a DefTech ProCenter 1000 (they're on the desk). I don't have a receiver but I bought cheap and weak, but very clean, Sonic Impact amps, that put out about 6W of clean sound at 8 Ohm. With 90dB SPL and at about 70cm from the speakers, I'm just fine.
Now I notice interference hum! I have to turn down the volume on the amps to get rid of it, and I still can hear very loudly the sounds put out by the Asus Xonar DX I got in the HTPC, but when I connect my iPod on its dock, I have to turn up the volume in the amps, and I can hear the hum. I didn't hear any hum when connecting the ipod dock directly to the amp with shorter higher-quality cables. The amps are very clean.
So, long story short, I'm gonna replace the cheap interconnects and hopefully it will give me a measurable difference. One downside is that at the ends I'm gonna have to use many converters since none of the ends take RCA! I am also in the process of rebuilding my HTPC, and I just got an Asus P5E-VM HDMI.
Now I'm gonna have to get an HDMI receiver! I'm thinking won't need a video card for that, since I also grabbed an E8400, and I say acceleration schmacceleration!