Play from computer to Arcam 7 amp

Hi
I am new to audio and have the following setup.

Arcam 8 CD
Arcam 7 Amp
Arcam 8 power amp
Arcam 8 Tuner

PC with tons of ram ect ect and Soundblaster Fatality XFI sound card and front panel.

Sound card has midi in out
SPDIF in out
Optical in out
Headphone out

All this on the front panel.

The question is how do I output from PC to Arcam amp and still maintane a quality system (MP3 compression ignored)

Thanks for reading and please input with your knowledge.

Regards
Arctree

 

You could connect the headphone output straight to a line input on your Arcam amp. It might sound OK.

If not then you probably want some kind of DAC.

For an SPDIF DAC a lot of people seem to like this one and it's reasonably priced:

http://www.homehifi.co.uk/main/main.html

There are other reasonably priced SPDIF DACs around, particularly in the pro-audio arena.

Alternatively you might bypass the sound card altogether and get a USB DAC.

Or you could use a Logitech Squeezebox, again bypassing the sound card and using the network instead (wired or wireless):

http://www.slimdevices.com/pi_squeezebox.html

 

I rather fancy the Beresford solution which seems affordable and has options. One more thing. PC Optical output to DAC (Beresford) would that matter how long it is? I am wondering about losses with an optical (toslink?) of about 8 metres as that is the distance from PC to Arcam.