QUESTION : HDMI, SPDIFF or Other?

[Mark Norville]

I have an LG 9.1 home cinema system and was using HDMI for both music and audio, but I always felt a bit let down with media even originals being played on HDMI such as Star Wars (1977) as seeing it as a kid I always have that as my bench mark, for testing but sadly that has never happened as I remember it e.g opening scene the star destroyer rumbled across the cinema and yet I never get that on the blu rays.

I recently brought a 7.1 sound card asus xonar and I thought that I had wasted my money as I was deciding whether to go for an HDMI cable or optical, ideally I wanted PC speakers as cheaper systems seem to give more bass.

I was very pleasantly surprised though about using an optical cable and the sound card which seemed to fill the room more, and produced sound that made me go WoW, I listened to a version of Elton John Candle in the wind and it was guitars playing and I could hear the changes in the guitar strums it really made me change my way of thinking regarding optical cables. I am not a person who is into audio, rough and ready sounds better to me at my local pub, but which do you prefer for playing audio?