video card hdmi audio vs dedicated sound card

What would be giving out the most audio quality? Outputting to an AV receiver, a single HDMI cable from the graphics card (providing both audio and video information) to the AV receiver seems the more convenient.

However, is there really an advantage, quality-wise, choosing the audio to be output through the audio card, instead? Keep in mind that the discussion is to be a theoretical one, therefore it could be assumed that the hardware used to be the best. Even, graphics-card technologies to be released years from now on could be taken into account.

Share your opinions, and let that knowledge of yours pouring out through every one of your holes!

Totally depends on the source. If you use bitstreaming for loseless audio then either is the same, providing your video card will do bitstream audio. I use my GTX 460 HDMI out for audio and video and it works great. I get DTS-MA, DD-TrueHD plus anyother codec and it sounds great.

My understanding is that using digital audio output which is HDMI, you wouldn't notice any difference. However if you were using analog audio ouput, you would notice a difference with a quality discrete sound card. That being said, even digital audio output from the video card isn't going to use any EAX effects if a game supports it where a discrete card would. EAX is dying though and very few games support it anymore so I wouldn't worry too much about it.

N1GHTRA1N said:

Totally depends on the source. If you use bitstreaming for lossless audio then either is the same, providing your video card will do bitstream audio.

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According to the specifications, the card would indeed be doing both DTS-MA and DD-TrueHD (lossless) bitstreaming.

If I am getting it right, there would not be any loss of quality using the video card through such lossless compression technologies -- these are great news!

However, what about 6-channels AC-3, AAC, and 2-channels MP3 encodings? And similarly, what about those 5.1-DD DVDs I might someday get on ripping?

Should such lossy codecs (or whatever they are to be called) be working as well as DTS-MA and DD-TrueHD bitstreaming, concerning video-card outputting?


Thanks in advance,
from a confused newbie

From what I've read, being that the source from your computer is digital (HDMI), audio quality is going to be primarily determined by your receiver, amp, speakers. Think of the line into your setup as "pure", what happens from there has nothing to do with the computer (not taking into account compression like MP3 codecs, EQ filtering, or other "source" affecting variables).

I know sound cards used to matter, but this was primarily to relieve your motherboard of the additional workload as well give the analog sound output a boost. I think digital output takes card of that and the videocard doesn't have a performance hit outputting sound because I think it uses a dedicated component (that's why not all videocards can do DVI/HDMI audio).

Anyways, that's my understanding from looking around wondering the same as you. I will say that using MP3s or any compression technology is going to make a noticeable difference in quality with a good setup (try listening to your favorite track at 320kbps then off the actual CD or original WAV). But that's just an issue of a quality speaker being fed compressed audio.

adrift02 said:

I know sound cards used to matter, but [...]

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If we are getting it right, then the implications to this are huge. It would mean that sound cards are getting obsolete, at least until both speakers and headphones turn over from analog to digital, assuming the AV receiver is equipped both to receive digital outputs and to decode up-to-lossless (that is, any relevant stream) bitstreams. Because, pure information gets transmitted from the source up to to the receiver. Video cards offering such audio-outputting technologies would therefore all be equal in terms of transmitted information. The remaining lifetime of audio-transmitting-hardware comparisons would therefore be counted in the dawn of this coming all-digital era.

I've been using HDMI-audio (on both ATI and Nvidia hardware) for 3 years now and I see no reason to ever go back to a separate sound card.
Fewer and few receivers are coming with 5 or 7-channel analog inputs, so you're never quite getting the full experience from Blu-Ray movies. Even using internal decoders, it's just plain better.
No settings or driver tweaks needed...just use your receiver's settings instead. It's one less driver to worry about in general.
As long as you have an external receiver with HDMI inputs, go for it. EAX is pretty much never used any longer, and there are tweaks to emulate it on almost anything now anyway.

Again, as I stated earlier, if you're using HDMI audio output to a receiver or TV, theres no need for a dedicated sound card, however if you're using analog audio ouput which many PC speakers still are, a good dedicated sound card will sound better.

twipley said:

According to the specifications, the card would indeed be doing both DTS-MA and DD-TrueHD (lossless) bitstreaming.

If I am getting it right, there would not be any loss of quality using the video card through such lossless compression technologies -- these are great news!

However, what about 6-channels AC-3, AAC, and 2-channels MP3 encodings? And similarly, what about those 5.1-DD DVDs I might someday get on ripping?

Should such lossy codecs (or whatever they are to be called) be working as well as DTS-MA and DD-TrueHD bitstreaming, concerning video-card outputting?


Thanks in advance,
from a confused newbie

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Yes, they will all work and sound great. The difference in quality would be almost none. I use my GTX 460 HDMI for all audio. Including stereo music, games (even games that support 5.1 or 7.1), DTS and DD 5.1 audio from DVD rips, etc. I couldn't be happier.

Here is a series of quotes, just for reference:

SAAIELLO said:

The sound that is output via the HDMI is the same no matter what device its coming from. It sends a purely digital signal to your receiver and all the processing of the sound is done externally so it doesn't matter if its coming from your motherboard, sound card, or video card.

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hick said:

HDMI sends the sound UNALTERED to the receiver.

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Sole1 said:

HDMI transmits bit-perfect digital audio to your home theater or TV system to decode.

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Some partial truths going around here, try and help clean it up a bit...

First off, today's devices (BD-players, TVs, game consoles, PCs) that handle any kind of audio data have one of two ways that they will send the audio to another device, such as a surround receiver. The first one is pretty much what people are talking about here and its called Bitstream format. Bitstream is where the information is sent directly to the connected audio device from the source, without looking at it, processing it, or anything, just 1s and 0s down the line. The other format that is used is called Linear PCM. With Linear PCM, the audio data is read and converted from raw data into this format and then sent off to the connected device. Source devices can all do LPCM but may not be able to do bitstream.

Linear PCM is the format that all music playback devices are capable of reading and understanding, a universal language if you will, whereas bitstream is just the raw audio data from the source which may or may not be understandable to the playback device. Most of today's (the last 5 years or so) surround receivers that are worth a damn can read bitstream just fine.

Now, there is a big debate on which one is actually better. Audiophiles will argue that bitstream is naturally better because its not touched by the device reading the source which COULD introduce artifacts in the original data by the conversion process to LPCM. Others will argue that any interference the source device could put into the audio could still be introduced down the chain by the receiver of the bitstreamed data because it still gets converted by the receiver.

Which format would be better, well thats completely subjective as audio is subjective, what sounds good to me may sound like shit to you. Honestly, I have never heard the difference between LPCM and bitstreamed audio on my home theater setup (which is no slouch)...but my hearing is shit so...that could explain things on my end.


As for sound card vs. HDMI out on video card...I would personally go with the HDMI out I think. The advantages of a dedicated sound card is a cleaner sound output as well as the ability to use a hardware equalizer to adjust the sound to your tastes taking the load (however light it may now be) off your processor. All the things that are done with a dedicated sound card can be done easily and usually better with a surround receiver. The "one less driver" arguement doesnt hold any water though as the HDMI audio out of the video card has its own driver installed (for AMD at least).

I use HDMI audio from a laptop to my receiver and audio quality is just as good as the digital optical connection from another PC's mb to the same receiver.

USMCGrunt said:

As for sound card vs. HDMI out on video card...I would personally go with the HDMI out I think. The advantages of a dedicated sound card is a cleaner sound output as well as the ability to use a hardware equalizer to adjust the sound to your tastes taking the load (however light it may now be) off your processor. All the things that are done with a dedicated sound card can be done easily and usually better with a surround receiver. The "one less driver" arguement doesnt hold any water though as the HDMI audio out of the video card has its own driver installed (for AMD at least).

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But don't new video cards have their own hardware processing built in to deal with sound? I thought that was the case as otherwise it would affect the video card's performance.

Optical connection offers the same quality as audio through HDMI, though the only difference is that optical doesnt support all the same audio modes as HDMI (chiefly TrueHD and DTS+).

I dont know for sure but I dont think the video card's audio hardware does any processing of the sound, just acts as a bridge to get the sound from the computer to the sound processing device.