Help choosing a sound card/sound system

[vuzedome]

Its cheaper to start with an audio card than swapping out for a new motherboard.
Speakers and amps come after the audio processing hardware so save up for that instead.
And by the way, don't dump so much cash into this even if you're trying to impress the girl next door, she won't really care much about it. 

[Talapus]

Its cheaper to start with an audio card than swapping out for a new motherboard.

He's building a new computer from scratch, so that is not really an issue. However, you can get the digital source from your computer from Optical, Coax, or USB (and just about any motherboard has a fair share of those). Digital signal is digital signal, so don't let someone talk you into buying a fancy cable (save the pixie dust and magic incantations for all of the other hardware).

And by the way, don't dump so much cash into this even if you're trying to impress the girl next door, she won't really care much about it. 

Hobbies are usually money sinks, and this is an expensive one. As with all big purchases, you should think over the cost and benefits. And if you decide that it's worth it, figure out how much money you are willing to spend, do some research, sleep on it (your cooldown time), and then go for it.

[sdedalus83]

If this is to be paired with a TV, just use HDMI for both audio and video.  For your purposes it's a better connection than spdif.
Don't sacrifice front pair speaker and receiver quality to get a subwoofer either.  Cheap (as in less than $500) subwoofers are either buzzboxes or are too small to produce real bass.  Set a budget and look at places like frys and saturday audio for big deals on prior year closeouts.  You can add surround speakers and a sub to a good stereo setup whenever you want to.  A mediocre surround set up or a crap subwoofer will just get tossed when the rest of the system is improved.

[Zayras]

Cool, thanks for all the tips... I do want good quality audio and think I will stick with a stereo set-up (probably add a sub to it) and build up from there. Since it's not for a TV i think I will have to use a digital out from the mobo I decide to get. Lately I've been really busy so I haven't had much time to research, but I certainly will in order to decide what to get based on price vs perforance... and certainly take my time on it, I don't want to blow my money on a mediocre sound system like you said.

[sdedalus83]

If it's not for a tv, how far will you be from the speakers?

[Zayras]

Not too far, my room gives me about 6ft (~1.8m) on either side