Help with Audio Output on computer

[Nystul]

I think what you really want would be a digital connection from your sound card to your receiver. I believe those Bose systems can take coaxial or optical inputs, but check to make sure. It is possible that your computer is already capable of this, as many onboard solutions now have digital outs. Otherwise, a pretty cheap soundcard will probably do the job well enough for your purposes. If you can take an optical connection, you could go with something like Chaintech's AV710 (apx. $25 US). No matter what solution you go with, you will need to buy the appropriate cable unless you have it already.

If you would really like special sound effects in games that support EAX (e.g. echoing sound in caves in D2), then it may be worthwhile to pay a bit more and get an Audigy-series card from Creative. On the cheaper (non-platinum) version of these cards, the digital out is a mini-jack like you would find on your headphones. You can connect this to a coaxial in using a special cable, or you can just use a regular coaxial (RCA) cable and hook a mono/phono adapter to one end. Other than EAX and other hardware accelerated gaming affects, there would be no reason for you to go this route.

Get a video card only if you would like better video capabilities, but don't expect it to do what you want in terms of audio playback.