I believe a friend of mine use on soundcard for TV and one for music etc. (Onkyo something). I belive he just selected different audiorenderer. Not sure. Somebody can probably confirm this.
Dare I mention the 'Audiophiles' (4 Viewers)
- Thread starter madad
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Well what I understand of the situation is that there is probbably no worse place than the inside of a pc to do the digital to analog conversion, due to a number of factors like electronic interferance etc.
And anyway hopefully all you're really doing is just sending a digital signal out to your amp to decode..
That's my understanding anyway. I by no means have the equipment to hear any difference at all, in fact I have diffculty picking the difference between a 192Kbps MP3 and the original source.
And anyway hopefully all you're really doing is just sending a digital signal out to your amp to decode..
That's my understanding anyway. I by no means have the equipment to hear any difference at all, in fact I have diffculty picking the difference between a 192Kbps MP3 and the original source.
- January 7, 2008
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If you send all digital signals untouched over the SPDIF, then any soundcard with an optical digital outlet will do, because all the expensive amplifying stuff on such a card is not used anyways.
Only if you plan to use the analogue outlets directly to the speakers or home cinema sound system, an expensive soundcard makes sense. Becaus eyou may expect on an expensive soundcard are better digital to analogue converters installed.
I just use the onboard realtek sound card, which has a digital outlet, and have perfect sound via my Marantz receiver.
Lots
But again that's not the only point. If your soundcard or it's driver is not capable of handling 44.1 khz without resampling you will never get auiophile output.
@madad:
why do you want to use two different amps for 5.1 and audio. There are good amps out there which fullfill both requirenments. E.g I'm using one of the top Denon amps and they have a "pure audio" mode where all internal processing units will be bypassed.
As soundcard I'm using a simple C-Media 8738 / 8768 based soundcard which you will get for about 20 EUR. The reason is that it is capable of outputting 44.1 khz without resampling if you use the open source driver esp. made for bitperfect playback (you can find it here). It is also capable to switch between 44.1 or 48 khz automatically which not every soudcard/driver combo can do. This is necessary to switch between audio and 5.1 without user intervention.
HTH
grubi.
I think the sound card referred to is the Onkyo SE200 pci, which is a tricky one to track down, as they are only for the Japanese market. However, I can certainly testify to the quality, and a huge improvement over a motherboard based chip. Stuffed full of high end capacitors, and solid copper insulating rails, it's also 7.1 capable [as well as spdif IN and out].
I actually discarded my HT amp, and am feeding my Martin Logans via this card now.
Auzentech also make a number of high end cards, which iirc will allow you to swap out the output op amps. Again quite tricky to hunt down.
Hope this is useful.
I actually discarded my HT amp, and am feeding my Martin Logans via this card now.
Auzentech also make a number of high end cards, which iirc will allow you to swap out the output op amps. Again quite tricky to hunt down.
Hope this is useful.
If you're really into audiophile listening with PC as transport, check out XXHighEnd - Index
- January 19, 2007
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I used to a have 2 cards. 1 was CM8738 based and could send 44.1khz but not auto switch (ie 48khz streams wouldn't then work without going into control panel). The other was the internal motherboard sound for all 48khz.
My solution was to buy a Revolution 5.1, with a Envy24 chipset that can autoswitch between different digital output rates so that the stream always ended up at the AV reciever in their original form. Works well, I recommend the card.
FINALLY. After exhaustive testing with the audio outputs on the Revolution, I now use the analogue outputs going straight into the AV receiver. This allows me to use FFDSHOW to:
- upsample to 96,000
- remix into 4.1 (I have a phantom centre)
- EQ signal (based on testing with AVIA test disk bass patterns, really only for bass config, top end is much harder and hence left alone for now)
- delay by 20ms to account for HDTV delay
I also use reclock, and this can also resample the audio after all the above processing in order to keep sync, so good to be at a higher rate than the default.
So, for all this you'd think the sonic soundstage or whatever audiophiles call it would be ruined. In fact, the difference is great. If you take the total difference over using the AV receiver to decode a raw digital signal, it is something no one could argue with in person.
I hope to improve music quality with oversampling in future, although Hwarhmann/Symphy have done some fantastic work lately. I can use the EQ's I worked out in FFDSHOW and use them in a VST EQ plugin. It would be great perhaps to be able to oversample first (just as your stand alone CD player would do) then EQ, then analogue out to the amp.
Waffling here, sorry, hope my story is useful.
vvvvvv I don't think that driver existed back when I was using that card (2 years ago). Plus I'm now in the analogue domain and the old card had awful DACs compared to the Revo.
My solution was to buy a Revolution 5.1, with a Envy24 chipset that can autoswitch between different digital output rates so that the stream always ended up at the AV reciever in their original form. Works well, I recommend the card.
FINALLY. After exhaustive testing with the audio outputs on the Revolution, I now use the analogue outputs going straight into the AV receiver. This allows me to use FFDSHOW to:
- upsample to 96,000
- remix into 4.1 (I have a phantom centre)
- EQ signal (based on testing with AVIA test disk bass patterns, really only for bass config, top end is much harder and hence left alone for now)
- delay by 20ms to account for HDTV delay
I also use reclock, and this can also resample the audio after all the above processing in order to keep sync, so good to be at a higher rate than the default.
So, for all this you'd think the sonic soundstage or whatever audiophiles call it would be ruined. In fact, the difference is great. If you take the total difference over using the AV receiver to decode a raw digital signal, it is something no one could argue with in person.
I hope to improve music quality with oversampling in future, although Hwarhmann/Symphy have done some fantastic work lately. I can use the EQ's I worked out in FFDSHOW and use them in a VST EQ plugin. It would be great perhaps to be able to oversample first (just as your stand alone CD player would do) then EQ, then analogue out to the amp.
Waffling here, sorry, hope my story is useful.
vvvvvv I don't think that driver existed back when I was using that card (2 years ago). Plus I'm now in the analogue domain and the old card had awful DACs compared to the Revo.