44.1kHz playback of audio files (1 Viewer)

[KevL]

2 soundcards work but then I need to switch input channels on my amp when I go between music and video.

Think of the wear and tear of my thumb, remote buttons etc.


Last eve I experminented with an M-Audio Transit USB sound module. It does USB to SPDIF out in a box the size of a fag packet.

It seems to be able to autoswitch between 44.1k and 48K quite happily and when using foobar2000 as the player (set to output directly to the transit card - no complicated ASIO or Kernel streaming needed) it can pass DTS and Dolby prologic audio files to the amp which then recognises and plays them happily.

It also auto switches to 48K when doing MPEG decode for video playback. I haven't managed to get it to pass DD5.1 stuff yet (the reciever treats DD5.1 stuff as stereo and plays it in Dolby Pro Logic II mode, but I'm trying to get AC3Filter to sort this out for me. Apparently there are lots of settings buried inside windows to make this work.


Why Realtek though it a good idea to basically make my MA78GM based MB ALC889 sound useless I cannot imagine. Nowhere on the Gigabyte MB box does it say "THE AUDIO ON THIS MB IS USELESS DUE TO CRAPPY DRIVERS." Maybe its something to do with DRM. Stop the user playing stuff then he wont copy it???? I noticed that when I looked at the installer file for the realtek sound driver it was authored by Macrovision. That filled me with no joy.



Kev

 

[bolders]

Hi

I can see there are advantages to using an analogue audio O/P however my preference is to do any D/A conversion outside of the PC to avoid any induced noise from other PC components.

I am using FLAC files and EAC to rip my CDs. What I want is bit perfect O/P to my amp and let the amp do the conversion hence the desire to get 44.1KHz O/P from the PC.

bolders

 

[automated]

Hi

I can see there are advantages to using an analogue audio O/P however my preference is to do any D/A conversion outside of the PC to avoid any induced noise from other PC components.

I am using FLAC files and EAC to rip my CDs. What I want is bit perfect O/P to my amp and let the amp do the conversion hence the desire to get 44.1KHz O/P from the PC.

bolders

The advantage for me in using analogue is that the dac on my chaintech soundcard sounds heaps better than the one in my denon AVR for music.

 

[KevL]

Have almost achieved success with Transit USB for SPDIF output to external amp.

Yesterday I managed to get it to work with bit-perfect audio for both 44.1 and 48kHz sources. As such I was able to pass DTS audio (44.1k) and DD5.1 (48k)

It is very hard to do but I finally worked out where I was going wrong.

For passing Dolby digital 5.1 and DTS from pc to DAC (in external preamp) the volume control in the PC must be set to 100%. Otherwise windows munges the data (when changing the volume) and the external preamp then cant understand the incoming data - so it either goes silent or plays it as a stereo signal. When data is simple PCM then windows can attenuate it as it just divides down the samples and passes them on. If it pull this same stunt with any compressed data (DTS, AC3 etc) then it actually corrupts the data.

So with volume set to full I was finally able to get it to work. No need to switch inputs on preamp and use 2 soundcards as the Transit USB just does the decent thing and passes all SPDIF stuff out untouched. I also disabled windows sounds, MP sounds for menus and muted all inputs etc. So my PC is now just an SPDIF transmitting device. I ended up using SPDIFER rather than AC3Filter as most of the functionality in AC3 filter is redundant in my app. I dont want to mess with the SPDIF stream I want it to pass straight through. SPDIFER is a subset of AC3filter and can be downloaded from the AC3 filter site.

Needless to say, sound quality is massively improved now that the preamp is getting proper un-messed- with SPDIF data.

I can now play music and watch DivX recordings. Have't yet got MPeg playback bit perfect (yet) but I'm nearly there.

The advantage for me in using analogue is that the dac on my chaintech soundcard sounds heaps better than the one in my denon AVR for music.

Are you sure??? I think windows can easily mess up the sound coming out of an SPDIF port. It might be that it takes your 44.1K CD data, resamples to 48K, messes with the data (to attenutuate, apply DSP etc) then re samples back to 44.1 and sends it to your poor denon set. It then faithfully plays the resulting "data" -which strangely doesn't sound very good.

I bet if you could get a bit perfect output to your denon it would sound better than the PC MB.

It really is worth persevering with.




Kev