My sound card has a DAC, can I join the cool club? The PC card is the Sound Blaster Audigy 2 ZS. I run my XM Radio (with the optical mod) into the Sound Blaster card. This way I can record the tracks in PCM mode 44 kHz, 16 bit, 1411 kHz bit rate. My 1TB HDD is full of music. The sound card plays in bypass mode straight through to a 2.1 amplifier I built myself, 2X20W stereo and 60W subwoofer. The sound out of my very efficient JBL Control 1 Plus pair and 10" sub is quite good for the room size. Or, I can switch the output of the sound card to a 250 mW headphone amp I built with matched discrete components. That amp feeds my 600 Ohm Sennheiser HD 600 headphones.