Actually after having this A3X, I'm really tempted to change my current front speakers in living room to A7X or A9X. But not sure if I pay the same $$$ for Adam's series to buy normal passive speakers + 後級, which one will be better?
Sorry, if I mislead you before. At the very beginning, I've a cheap cheap Creative X-Fi sound card, before I got the A3X. And actually, my very original intension is to find a speaker that can work with my PC as well as iPod, so that I don't need to turn on another PC to listen to music while I'm working with my office PC. So, my original expectation is really low. But the sound quality surprise me a lot when I use the speaker with the Creative X-Fi. So, at the end, I only play from my iPod directly for a few time.
And as most of you here, after reading lots of post in this 76 site, I was tempted to try out a DAC and use the Coaxial connection directly from my Asus motherboard. The improvement is significantly better than RCA output directly from my Creative X-Fi. But if you compare that with a better sound card, the gap may not be that large. But I would say, having a DAC output to the speaker must be better that output from the soundcard, as your DAC is a proper musical equipment with individual power, much lower noise and much better power than your sound card. Also, after I changed to DAC, I changed from RCA connection to XLR, its even better.
... in future, my upgrade the power cords for all speakers & DAC for further improvement, then upgrade the PC again, then upgrade the speakers... then upgrade the DAC... upgrade the cords..... forever and ever..... but first of all, need to think about how to upgrade my wallet so that I can pay for all these