Connecting your computer to your audio

There are two ways to connect your computer to your audio.

Analogue

The sound card of the computer does the conversion to analogue. You connect the analogue out of the computer to the analogue in of the amplifier.
Often the quality of the on board sound card is only moderate. In case of a desktop, you can replace it by a better on. In case of a laptop you can’t so a digital out is the only way to improve on it.

Digital

The output of the computer is digital. It is converted to analogue by an outboard sound card.

SPDIF

In the audio world SPDIF is the standard to connect audio equipment digital.
This standard is less common in the computer world. There are sound cards having SPDIF out.

You connect it to a DAC or a receiver with digital in..

USB

In the computer world USB is the standard. Slowly more and more audio manufactures are producing high quality audio components with a USB input.

Streaming

A completely different class are the streaming audio players. They use TCP/IP or UDP to load the music from a server. You are not transmitting music, but a file. The receiver buffers this file and starts to read it with its own clock. This is a excellent transport mechanism as it is input jitter free by design. This can’t be said about SPDIF or USB.
Most of them have a analogue out (RCA) and a digital out (often Toslink).
If you want to improve on the sound quality you can use the digital out to feed a DAC. The paradox is of course that you are back to stone age SPDIF again.