Question about Improving Sound Quality

Hi guys, My Name is Julian as you may all see and I am new to this form and also a new MAC User. I just came from a PC (which i still do like alot, however I am going to be enrolling in a music school to learn and Create my own Trance/Electronic Music. Now for my question, I purchased the MacBook Pro with the 13.3 inch screen/2.26 cpu/2 gigs ram which i will be upgrading to 4). Since I am only enrolling in the program in January 2gigs should be suffice even if I was orginally coming from 8gigs on my PC (vista is a resource hog) My question is as follows....I have my MacBook hooked up through a Monster RCA Cable coming from my MacBook which splits in two going into my AMPS AUX OUT, and I wanted to know if there was any way i could buy a better sound card for the MAC something external that would improve the sound quality of my Mac. Specs for my MP3's are always over 256kbps mostly 320kbps and some Lossless. Im running fairly good Stuff in my home audio System my Amp is a NAD C350 connected to to Axiom Audio M60 towers and a dls-4000 Velodyne SUB hence the reason im asking if I can improve sound quality coming from the MAC. Now im really not sure if the MAC has any effect at all on the sound or is it just my AMP. Any feedback would be greatly appreciated. I also have a pair of Headphones that I use Sennheiser HD650, and the MacBook drives them not too bad but im still looking for more


Thank you very much for all your responces and sorry for the long explanation

a sound card would process sound faster, and wouldn't actually make it sound better.
If you had stuttering sound, that's when you'd think of dedicated hardware for it.
it sounds like you'll have to play either with your system or the acoustic settings; iTunes will be set to no EQ at all, I'm assuming.
you might want to check out the other EQ settings?

I've always thought of a Macintosh laptop (or any laptop for that matter)...when it comes to music or sound hardware...is that's it's just a big expensive mp3 player.

Once you output the music signal from the laptop...you pretty much have the best quality you're going to get. Maybe you can "clean" things up a bit with software...but that's it.

The key is the music needs to be in the highest quality format when you load it onto your laptop...so when you output it you have the highest quality possible.

I guess what would be interesting to find out from the original poster...What sort of issues do you have with the sound coming out of your MBP currently...and what is it that you want to improve?

- Nick