That said, I really appreciate the detailed answers from everyone on their experiences in getting better sounding computer audio out of their computers. I only have a dial-up 56K connection though, as there is no cable service in my town, and my home is too far from the phone company's closest switch. This rules out a broadband connection for my computer other than possibly satellite service which is currently too expensive. I currently use a combination of Direct TV satellite service and large rotatable directional off-the-air TV/FM antennas for TV viewing and FM listening.
Back to Computer Audio, I truly believe my notebook's sound card is to blame because the sound is lower fidelity than even a simple phone call -- which only uses a few KHz of bandwidth. The sound out of my notebook's headphone jack is both frequency and dynamic range constricted and even has a warble nature to it, sounding like I'm listening under water. If I were to estimate I would say the signal is at most 20 dB stronger than the background noise. I am not expecting LP, or even CD quality, but I am pretty sure that my current situation can be greatly improved, despite my relatively low bandwidth potential.
Thanks for the names of the other external sound cards. These are names I had not heard of. I will look into them as well as the one I mentioned. Assuming I were to run a 30 foot digital coax or optical cable across the room from the USB connected external sound card, does anyone know what data rate I could expect to see at the Musical Fidelity external DAC I currently have sitting on my shelf and would like to re-deploy in this application? I am thinking that the Musical Fidelity external DAC so connected will afford a better sounding analog output stage than any of the inexpensive ($80 - $200) external sound cards that I am considering. So then I am not looking for full USB to analog conversion from the inexpensive external sound card. I would just like to get the computer audio out of my notebook via USB and converted to a signal format that I can run a distance to a known good sounding external DAC.
Thanks again, and Kind Regards.
