How to connect Headphone amp & Z5500 to prelude without loss of quality.

I currently have my Z5500 connected to my Prelude by analog cables. The thing is, I became the proud owner of a STAX SR Lambda Professional headphone with a STAX SRM-212 headphone amplifier. Usually I connected my Sehnheiser HD201 just to the front header (with loss of quality, but with a hp like the quality loss it's barely noticeable) But now every bottleneck in the connection is noticeable with the STAX.

The only way I know of connecting it without quality loss is trough the front out on the prelude but it is already occupied by the green front connector of the Z5500, so I have to keep crawling under my desk switching the connectors.

The other way is trough the front header that I connected to the card. But it's giving me static noise and hisses.


Final option I know of is to connect my Z5500's digitally.. Using the DAC of the Z5500 instead of the Preludes' for music, gaming and video.. I will use some nice features of the card and I will loose some quality for the speakers. The Z5500 DAC is not bad.. but it's certainly not as good as the Preludes' (The Z5500s' DAC sounds warm and dynamic but I'm missing details).


I was looking for a sound card that has both 5.1 and high quality output for headphone (doesn't need to be amplified, cause I already have amplifier)
For headphone the choice is simple: Asus Xonar Essence STX but it's only a 2 channel card.. So I will have to connect my Z5500 digital.. not really an improvement over the Prelude.

Any ideas how to sort this problem out?

 

You can use a splitter, or use a switch.

You can try and shield the front panel but I would try and stick to the front channel outputs on the back of the card.

 

you could pick up an spdif to analog converter - i'm assuming the price to quality ratio is something to look in to.

use the spdif on your prelude as the headphones out - you'll still be able to use headphones mode and cmss.

 

Xonar DX or D1 sound card

Get an Asus Xonar DX or D1 sound card.
Connect the Z-5500 with the three 3.5mm cables to the Xonar's analog speaker connectors (Green, Orange, Black) and the headphone amplifier to the front panel headphone jack.
Find Xonar DX & D1 used on eBay.