Upgrading audio sound card worth the money? Will there be a noticeable difference?

[akasixcon]

I have my original stock sound driver from my Sony vaio and im wondering if upgrading my audio card will make a difference. i saw this one sound card im newegg that is $30 and another coaxial audio cable for $2. My home theatre system, in which i will use to connect to my pc, only accepts coaxial spdif input.

The current sound card I have right now does not have coaxial spdif output. I'm still satisfied connecting it to my pc using a RCA to the pc audio jack adapter.

The audio card I'm looking at is at 96 kHz ? How will that compare with my soundmax card? Is there a way to see information about the technical aspects of my sound card so I can make a noticable upgrade?

Is there any benefit from the analog output to the digital coaxial output?

Thanks!

 

[thirdshiftdj]

Re: Upgrading audio sound card worth the money? Will there be a noticeable difference

96k is the sampling rate. The higher the better (for quality). People mostly use 44.1 or 48k which is cd and dvd quality sound. Depending on your ears you can notice a difference in sound quality. I know I did when I went to the creative soundblaster 2 zs platinum pro.