Well I picked up the audigy zs soundcard for notebooks, only because it had dvd audio capable and not just 2 channel, I used a toslink cable with the standard adapters that come with the toslink cable and plugged right in, No adapters are needed like the manual states. I downloaded about 10 updates off the creative website, and using the playback player that came with, I must say so far in just stereo, I was able to dial it in very close to stand alone playback, very close more tinkering is needed, but was impressed with it at this point. For any owners out there turning on the AVS feature made all the difference. And I am going to encode all my cds to .wav 44,100 orginal cd quality, and have my notebook served through my network. I will update when I dial in the surround/DTS/Dvd audio playback. Another interesting thing I noticed with computer playback, is winamp, windows media player, they dont sound as good as the stock software it comes with. Also 1 important note is stock its set at 48,000 output, change to 44,100 for pcm playback. Is there an actual audiophile quality playback player for windows???