Advice regarding sound card and/or system upgrade for SPDIF.

klankymen · Post by **klankymen** » Tue Jan 29, 2008 11:44 am

OK, since I am having SPDIF problems, as described in this thread, which I have since found out seem to stem (problem B at least) from a compatibility issue of the old crappy AC850 chip with VLC and/or SPDIF.

So I'm thinking about getting some new audio output.
They way it looks, the options are to either get a dedicated sound card, or get a new motherboard. Buying a socket 939 motherboard today is pretty much retarded though.
So I was thinking, sell RAM, CPU, Mobo and Heatsink for ~130â‚¬
and replace with:
Gigabyte GA-MA69GM ~55â‚¬ (newegg link)
65nm 2.1GHz dual-core Brisbane ~ 45â‚¬ (newegg link)
8GB of dual-channel DDR2 ~130â‚¬ (If I do upgrade to DDR2, I want to keep it for my next computer)
Scythe Ninja Mini ~30â‚¬

That would be about 130â‚¬ cost to me, incidentally the same as supposedly good "audiophile" sound card, the ESI Juli@.

However maybe both of these ideas are stupid.

Basically, what I want if I get a new sound card is a card that can output quality 2-channel audio (preferably via an RCA port on the card, rather than headphone jacks), and also output multichannel via SPDIF (and doesn't stutter while doing it). However I am wondering if these audiophile grade cards are also capable of outputting surround sound from a game via SPDIF. This means the gaming sounds have to be encoded into Dolby or DTS first, can the CPU reasonably do this? or are there "hifi" soundcards which are capable of this? What is the spec to be looking for if I want that?

awolfe63 · Post by **awolfe63** » Tue Jan 29, 2008 1:04 pm

If you can use optical instead of coax - I got a USB SPDIF soundcard from SIIG. It was $20 after rebate.

http://www.siig.com/ViewProduct.aspx?pn=CE-S00022-S1

klankymen · Post by **klankymen** » Wed Jan 30, 2008 7:30 am

OK, thanks for the tip, I'll look if I can find one of those here.

Another question: Does anyone with a soundcard know if it's possible to switch between onboard and dedicated sound on the fly (at least without changing around drivers and stuff)?

I was wondering if it would be possible to use the onboard sound for surround gaming, and use a dedicated card for 2 channel and DTS/Dolby.

FlorisNielssen · Post by **FlorisNielssen** » Wed Jan 30, 2008 7:49 am

Don't know exactly.
On my laptop, I've got a Zalman USB-audio device that works half of the time and I've got the integrated the audio (that works if you're lucky).
With Windows, you can go to the Control Panel -> Sounds and Audio devices -> Audio. There, you can set the default audio device.
So I suppose you can switch on the fly.

klankymen · Post by **klankymen** » Wed Jan 30, 2008 7:55 am

Thanks for the info. Do you have drivers for both devices installed?

sjoukew · Post by **sjoukew** » Wed Jan 30, 2008 1:10 pm

If you enable both devices, you can switch on the fly. Each program should be able to select the output device (winamp can). Other programs just take the configured default, which is on the fly selectable.

klankymen, you reallly want a sound card and NOT an onboard thingie. Those onboard thingies are meant for crap desk /office speakers to produce the windows "Bing" sound etc.

Whatever you do and try, without a decent sound card, you don't get a decent sound, simple.
I didn't read the referenced thread completely, but the first thing which came to me was this link X-Fi for Music Lovers: Auzentech X-Fi Prelude 7.1 in Detail and
Auzentech X-Meridian 7.1 review and Auzentech's HDA X-Plosion 7.1 DTS-Connect.
I would advise to look into these kind of products for high quality sound.

neon joe · Post by **neon joe** » Wed Jan 30, 2008 2:10 pm

sjoukew wrote:klankymen, you reallly want a sound card and NOT an onboard thingie. Those onboard thingies are meant for crap desk /office speakers to produce the windows "Bing" sound etc.

sjoukew (and others), what do you think about onboard digital out?

Is there any advantage to a having a soundcard with digital out, as opposed to onboard?
I would think that digital is digital... or am I forgetting something?

klankymen · Post by **klankymen** » Wed Jan 30, 2008 3:24 pm

sjoukew wrote:If you enable both devices, you can switch on the fly. Each program should be able to select the output device (winamp can). Other programs just take the configured default, which is on the fly selectable.

klankymen, you reallly want a sound card and NOT an onboard thingie. Those onboard thingies are meant for crap desk /office speakers to produce the windows "Bing" sound etc.

Whatever you do and try, without a decent sound card, you don't get a decent sound, simple.
I didn't read the referenced thread completely, but the first thing which came to me was this link X-Fi for Music Lovers: Auzentech X-Fi Prelude 7.1 in Detail and
Auzentech X-Meridian 7.1 review and Auzentech's HDA X-Plosion 7.1 DTS-Connect.
I would advise to look into these kind of products for high quality sound.

Is that card really that good? I always thought that even a moderate hifi card would have much better analog output than all those high fangled gamer cards. I'll take a look at your links.

neon joe wrote:
sjoukew wrote:klankymen, you reallly want a sound card and NOT an onboard thingie. Those onboard thingies are meant for crap desk /office speakers to produce the windows "Bing" sound etc.
sjoukew (and others), what do you think about onboard digital out?

Is there any advantage to a having a soundcard with digital out, as opposed to onboard?
I would think that digital is digital... or am I forgetting something?

There is some advantage if your onboard digital output is as screwed up as mine.

jhhoffma · Post by **jhhoffma** » Wed Jan 30, 2008 5:51 pm

Well, the original Auzentech cards were designed around an audiophile mindset. I don't know that the newer cards include this feature, but the original had upgradeable OPAMPs to even further improve the SNR of the analog output. They were very high-quality cards that did Dolby Digital Live (DTS-Connect) encoding for all sources.

I don't know what OS you are using, but that will make a difference. Vista completely redesigned the way windows handles sound. While WindowsXP fully supports these cards, full support in Vista is lacking from what I understand.

sjoukew · Post by **sjoukew** » Thu Jan 31, 2008 12:03 pm

Vista support for the x-fi is OK now, it works, no more, no less.
I don't know anything about the sound quality of the X-Fi compared to the other sound cards. I know that the X-Fi is way better than everything else creative has made, but I don's have any clue how that is in comparison to other soundcards, but I am very interested, so if somebody knows, please share that knowledge.

Digital Out does only say that the sound isn't sent to the receiver over an analog cable. It doesn't say anything about the sound processing. I don't know how many / if any sound processing is done when the digital out is used. I suspect there is, but I don't know.