How can I get the best possible sound from my PC?

I'm discovering that many Internet radio sources differ wildly in their quality of signal. Some are quite 'hot' in the high end. KCSM (www.kcsm.org) is one where I get this via MS media player. Others are quite muffled leading me to believe that the studio engineers aren't paying attention to the signal matching.

The most consistent quality audio stream I get is from KPLU (www.kplu.org) in Tacoma, WA. Excellent bloom and imaging from my M-audio USB outboard soundcard. I listen to it all day when working from my home office.

BTW, I'm not one for attempting to operate from an internal soundcard that relies on the awful switching supplies in PCs - even using an outboard DAC. The nice thing about USB or Firewire is that you've got clocked data streams instead of that poorly-thoughtout SPDIF.

Cheers,

David

I have a bunch of mp3s I've ripped using EAC on my computer and ultimately run them through a Theta Pro Basic DAC. Since I wanted to use what I had on hand, the problem is that I've got a little MAudio Sonica USB to toslink converter at the computer end, an MAudio CO2 toslink to coax converter at the DAC end, and about 36' of bad toslink cable in between. They are just mp3s, but can anyone suggest a better transmission scheme with less in the way? Would I be better off with a 36' USB run? The Theta only has coax in; is there a cheap USB to coax option? Is a 36' run of coax digital better or worse than 36' of USB or 36' of toslink?

Don't mean to hijack your thread, but figured the experts might show up here and take a look and be able to answer this one too...

I have bought an used "Trust 5.1 Optical sound expert" soundcard with optical digital output (optical cable is included with it) for about 25 Euro. Through this optical interface I connect my PC with my external 24 bit 48 kHz DAC and I am satisfied very much with this solution. Optical connection is the only way (in my opinion), how to eliminate interferences from computer to the rest of audio-chain.