Need Help Optimizing PC Audio

Which Marantz?

Do you think, if this step is successful you may want to take more steps? What kind of speakers?

If we can get the bigger picture… we can probably be of more help.

@ghdprentice It’s a Marantz SR6013. I’m currently upgrading my towers/center to Focal Aria or Kantas most likely in the next few weeks. I’m also installing a power conditioner and a direct 20amp line for the amps. Is there a DAC that I can just go HDMI in and HDMI out or is that not a thing? Thanks for all the help.

Is the sound quality that bad?

I am doing the same thing except I have the Marantz 8805 and do HDMI from a custom built pc to the 8805. Then B & W  CDM7 SE fronts, 7.2 with 4 Atmos.

Is your pc or Marantz doing the rendering? If I use my 8805 the sound quality is a little better but not really worth it to me full time because I have Plex on the pc and also have all my cds ripped to flac.

And yes with optical you would lose Atmos, again I do the same thing I use my setup for movies and music. There are some things you can do for a pc like get a linear power supply to get rid of a lot of noise.

Like I said I think mine sounds pretty good for what the setup is, so until my job working on the corner starts to pay off or I hit the lotto I'm good. 

@flrun No I don't think the sound quality is bad at all. I'm just trying to make sure if there's an extra couple hundred I can spend on a DAC and it makes a difference that I do simple things like that. If there's no sensible option that will keep atmos then I'll just keep my current setup. I was just hoping for a simple fix, haha, which never appears to exist.

I came across this DAC. Any opinions? It has hdmi input and output. Would this make a significant difference instead of going straight from the PC to the Receiver?