High-End Soundcard for HTPC

[audioqueso]

RME 9632 Soundcard. Anyone ever heard of it?
I just heard of this soundcard, and started wondering if this is a good option for me. I want to make my HTPC as good as a good CD player. I've been asking a few guys over at AVS about it, but haven't really heard from anyone who's owned that soundcard. I've heard some good recommendations on external DACs, but I'd like to keep it simple if possible.

So for the past few years, I've been using my HTPC with a Chaintech AV-710 soundcard and just been sending an optical signal to whatever pre-amp or AV receiver that I've owned (following the bit-perfect setup).
Pre/pro equipment has gone from Marantz AV receiver, to Parasound separates, to a new Marantz receiver (SR7002)... and always to my B&W 805's. That combination has worked well, but now that I've moved to McIntosh I've come to realize that my source is my bottleneck. So now I want my source (HTPC) to be good enough for the rest of my components.

I read about the RME 9632 by just reading around forums. The impression that I heard was that it beats any AV receiver's DAC and can best many dedicated CD players. That's what I want. I want to put my HTPC on the same caliber as my McIntosh. I don't want it to be my bottleneck anymore.

Has anyone had experience with the RME 9632 soundcard? And can they comment that it really does make an HTPC sound as good as a dedicated CD player.

[audioqueso]

By the way, my budget is under $1k.

One last thing, could keeping my HTPC exactly as it is, and send the optical output to an external DAC (like one from Musical Fidelity) really make my HTPC capable of being as good as a hifi CD player?

[JustinGN]

Computer Sound is a hotly debated issue as of late, particularly as home servers have increased in proliferation. In my opinion, pretty much anything *except* an X-Fi will provide very good sound for the money, even some On Board sound chipsets. That said, I haven't heard anything about the 9632 myself; I've heard great things about the AES16 from Lynx, though I doubt many of us have 5.1/7.1 XLR Inputs on our processors (though a few of us do have stereo XLR Inputs for CD Players).

To be honest, bitstreaming as much audio as you can is the best option in terms of balancing a budget. Grabbing an ASUS XONAR and chaining everything into a single HDMI Connection is probably a good idea, though for CD Playback only, Optical Output is perfectly fine. I say stick with what you have, unless you've got the XLR Inputs for the AES16.

EDIT: Looked up the RME 9632, and it looks pretty nice. I definitely like the Expansion Modules and SecureBIOS features. If you can, see about hunting down current owners for an audition session or two.

[Hdale85]

I use a nice external DAC and have compared my setup to several higher end CD players and it sounds excellent and me as well as some other friends can't really tell the difference and in some instances mine actually sounds better.