You don't want to use the DAC on the sound card... whoooa, no! Junk. Get a soundcard with an external Coaxial (RCA) and/or TOSLINK digital output. These skip the cheapo onboard DAC (only meant to blip and tweep) on the soundcard and will send as good a digital signal as they can out to an offboard unit.
On the cheapo side of things, I have a Soundblaster Live 5.1 ($40-$50) with a Hoontech (Korean) daughterboard for the 5.1 that gives you Coax/TOS digital outs ($40) feeding a Musical Fidelity X-ACT DAC ($100), going into a Jolida 102b (coming next week - replacing a parasound SS setup). For very little dough, a knockout setup. Doesn't take much imagination, just get yourself out of the noisy computer chassis in digital, do the conversion in an outboard DAC, then you know the rest...
Mike
On the cheapo side of things, I have a Soundblaster Live 5.1 ($40-$50) with a Hoontech (Korean) daughterboard for the 5.1 that gives you Coax/TOS digital outs ($40) feeding a Musical Fidelity X-ACT DAC ($100), going into a Jolida 102b (coming next week - replacing a parasound SS setup). For very little dough, a knockout setup. Doesn't take much imagination, just get yourself out of the noisy computer chassis in digital, do the conversion in an outboard DAC, then you know the rest...
Mike