Moving up to digital audio; which connection?

I'll start by saying, I know very little about digital audio. I've had the same set of Altec Lansing 2.1 speakers for the last 5 years, and they are still good, but I'd like to upgrade.

I have a K8N-E Deluxe motherboard, it has these outputs:


I believe the plugs on the left are coax and digital spdif out.

I'm going to get the Logitech Z-5500's, and it has these inputs:


I'm not a maniac audiophile, just want some surround sound for dvd's, gaming, and listening to my growing music collection in as best quality as reasonably possible. What is the best way for me to connect the new speakers?

tia.

"Realtek ALC850, 8-channel CODEC"

Oi. Best option would be another soundcard.

Chastity said:

"Realtek ALC850, 8-channel CODEC"

Oi. Best option would be another soundcard.

Click to expand...

Read the end of the post. He isn't a maniac audiophile.

TO THE OP: Either port works. There seems to be some thought that the optical is better than the coax, but since you aren't a manican audiophile, I think either one would be fine for your use. Hope I could help.

If you're not a manic audiophile, grab any old RCA cable you have lying around, plug one end into the yellow RCA jack on the motherboard and the other end into the "digital coax" input on the speakers, and you're done.

If, at any point, you become a manic audiophile, feel free to go to your favourite audio boutique, buy a $500 specially designed digital RCA cable, and bask in the warm glow of the burning cash.

BuudWeizErr said:

I'm not a maniac audiophile, just want some surround sound for dvd's, gaming, and listening to my growing music collection in as best quality as reasonably possible. What is the best way for me to connect the new speakers?

Click to expand...

Just FYI - if you switch to digital from an analog connection, you will lose surround sound in games and speaker cloning/surround in your music. Onboard digital allows stereo encoding only (although it can pass through pre-encoded surround content, as from DVDs).

For audio, analog > digital.

Also, when you do digital to the Z-5500, you are using the output stage of whatever Logitech put inside their unit (DAC, etc), and I bet you it's one of the things they decided to cut corners on. (I remember the Z680 used some mediocre Motorola DAC)

chastity: well, I agree it probably sucks, but it likely can't possibly suck more than the DAC on his motherboard, so, yeah, pick which suckage you want, I suppose

dderidex: good point about surround in games. Personally I wouldn't be fussed about surround for music - the speakers can upmix a stereo input to multichannel just as well as the PC would - but yeah, for games going digital would be a problem. However, I doubt his onboard sound does a great job of surround processing for gaming either? To the OP, if you really want the "real" surround that the games produce, you're probably going to need to get a Creative Audigy or X-Fi and connect it via the analog (green, yellow and purple) connectors. If you're happy with "fake" surround produced by the speakers' upmix processing, you can stick to using the digital connection from your onboard sound. Your call.

AdamW said:

chastity: well, I agree it probably sucks, but it likely can't possibly suck more than the DAC on his motherboard, so, yeah, pick which suckage you want, I suppose

dderidex: good point about surround in games. Personally I wouldn't be fussed about surround for music - the speakers can upmix a stereo input to multichannel just as well as the PC would - but yeah, for games going digital would be a problem. However, I doubt his onboard sound does a great job of surround processing for gaming either? To the OP, if you really want the "real" surround that the games produce, you're probably going to need to get a Creative Audigy or X-Fi and connect it via the analog (green, yellow and purple) connectors. If you're happy with "fake" surround produced by the speakers' upmix processing, you can stick to using the digital connection from your onboard sound. Your call.

Click to expand...

i just assumed that digital was better. my lack of audio knowledge is showing. would i be better served to use the 3 analog connectors from mobo to speakers? as far as sound cards, I want to see how well the onboard sound does before buying a new soundcard.

BuudWeizErr said:

i just assumed that digital was better. my lack of audio knowledge is showing. would i be better served to use the 3 analog connectors from mobo to speakers? as far as sound cards, I want to see how well the onboard sound does before buying a new soundcard.

Click to expand...

In an ideal situation, digital is better. Digital bypasses the source and uses the electronics from the receiver or, in the case of the Logitechs, the speaker DAC. In a situation with a good stereo or surround receiver, the electronics in the receiver should be better than those of the source. Soundstorm is a different case. The encoding to a DDL signal makes the sound quite good.

So for the most part, yes, digital is better, but not with cheap components. Either way, digital or analog, I don't think you could go wrong.

so_cal_forever said:

In an ideal situation, digital is better. Digital bypasses the source and uses the electronics from the receiver or, in the case of the Logitechs, the speaker DAC. In a situation with a good stereo or surround receiver, the electronics in the receiver should be better than those of the source. Soundstorm is a different case. The encoding to a DDL signal makes the sound quite good.

So for the most part, yes, digital is better, but not with cheap components. Either way, digital or analog, I don't think you could go wrong.

Click to expand...

The Logitech speaker DAC is not any better than the DAC on the X-Fi, though.

So, perhaps, in an "ideal situation", digital would be better. But that "ideal situation" would be:
- Using a soundcard that can encode DTS on-the-fly (none exist yet)
- Using a soundcard that sacrifices no APIs or extensions to do the above - EAX5, OpenAL, etc (needless to say, none exist yet, and none are in development or planned)
- Outputting to a high-end standalone DTS receiver (plenty exist, they aren't cheap)
- Running speakers off the receiver that would actually let you notice the difference (that wouldn't be any kind of "PC speakers" - certainly nothing from Logitech)

Your comparison to the Soundstorm would not apply, however. FAR too much is lost encoding a 5.1 source to a mere 640kbps stream for it to compare favorably with a GOOD (read: X-Fi, or 'prosumer card') analog solution. Plus, only supports up to EAX2, which means it will short you a lot of effects in most recent games on TOP of the audio quality loss. It was great in its day, when it was just competing against Creative's Audigy 1, but that's some time ago now....

BuudWeizErr said:

i just assumed that digital was better. my lack of audio knowledge is showing. would i be better served to use the 3 analog connectors from mobo to speakers? as far as sound cards, I want to see how well the onboard sound does before buying a new soundcard.

Click to expand...

If the onboard audio is a C-Media solution, then that shouldn't be too bad at all. If it's a Realtek solution, then it will be pretty bad.

dderidex said:

Your comparison to the Soundstorm would not apply, however. FAR too much is lost encoding a 5.1 source to a mere 640kbps stream for it to compare favorably with a GOOD (read: X-Fi, or 'prosumer card') analog solution. Plus, only supports up to EAX2, which means it will short you a lot of effects in most recent games on TOP of the audio quality loss. It was great in its day, when it was just competing against Creative's Audigy 1, but that's some time ago now....

Click to expand...

Agreed. What I was implying was that digital connections allow for special encodings like DDL which provides a more pleasant result, though I guess it would be more accurate to make this assumption about the general public instead of Hi-Fi junkies. Personally, an accurate reproduction is what matters to me.

buudweizer: to put it another way (and hopefully make it simpler), look at it this way:

your ears are analog. Your computer is digital. Somewhere in the middle, something has to convert the digital sound file to an analog, well, sound.

What you're actually doing here is deciding whether that conversion should take place in your computer or in your speakers, and we're giving you some factors you should take into account in making your decision.

The first thing you need to consider is quality. If all other factors were irrelevant, you would want to do the digital -> analog conversion in the component with the best DAC.

Our general opinion is that the DAC on your motherboard is likely crap, and so is the DAC in your speakers. If you're going to stay with the onboard audio then from the quality point of view you're better off doing the D-A conversion in the speakers - i.e., using a digital connection from PC to speakers - because although the Logitech DAC sucks, it likely sucks either only as much as the motherboard DAC or possibly a little less, and it has the added advantage of being in a less noisy environment, so overall it wins.

This picture changes if you buy an X-Fi, because it has a better DAC than your motherboard and very likely a better DAC than your speakers too. So you'd be better off doing the D-A conversion in your PC, in this case - i.e., use analog connections from the X-Fi to the speakers.

However, another factor complicates the issue: let's call it features. You need to consider three different _types_ of audio here.

1: stereo music
2: games
3: movies

Music is never going to be problem whether you connect analog or digital. However, the other two types of audio have a bearing on the decision. They can both contain surround sound audio, which you (presumably) want to reproduce accurately. The surround sound on most movie soundtracks is in a standardised format - either Dolby Digital or DTS, or sometimes both - which most sound cards with digital outputs can stream straight through to your speakers, allowing them to do the decoding. However, game audio is not in such a format. Receivers (and speakers with built in receiving functions, like your Logitechs) don't understand the format game audio comes in. There's also no standard for streaming it digitally. So getting a "pure" digital surround stream out of games to a digital receiver / speakers is pretty much a non-starter.

This leaves you with two options. One, use the analog connections of a card which knows how to decode game audio, like an X-Fi. This is the simplest choice. Two, get a special card which can decode game surround audio and then encode it, on the fly, to Dolby Digital or DTS. This workaround lets you stream a proper surround digital signal to your speakers / receiver. There's only a couple of such cards, though. They're discussed in other threads in this forum. Given that the DAC in your speakers is likely nothing much to write home about, I wouldn't go this route if I were you.

So basically, taking all this factors into account, I'd say you have two sensible options.

One, use the digital output from your onboard sound. This will give you decent music output, should let you stream the proper surround signal from movies to the speakers with appropriate software (like PowerDVD), and will give you stereo output in games, which you can let the speakers 'upmix' to 5.1. The main limitation of this option is that you are not getting the proper surround audio in games that support it.

Two, get an X-Fi and hook it up via the analog outputs. This will give you good output in all three major scenarios, good enough to do your speakers justice.

AdamW, you are my hero. I've been looking everywhere for an explanation like that!

X-Fi + Z-5500's + analogue = here I come

Good explanation. Thank you AdamW.

AdamW's post is right on.

BuudWeizErr, your at a point where chances are you will not notice any real world diffrences between digital coaxial and analog cables. To test this out yourself, connect both the 3 analog cables to your speakers, plus a digital coaxial cable. See if you notice a difference.
Your at a point where the features each route gives you are more important. In your case, I would just suggest you use three analog connections and get to playing some games in True surround sound.

I hope you enjoy your new Z-5500's better then your 5 year old altec lansing 2.1 speakers (funny thing is, I too had 2.1 altec lansing speakers, and I enjoyed them back then.)

i got everything setup.

i used the 3 plug analog connections plus an optical cable. i use optical for movies and music, and I use the analog connections for games. just change the inputs and everything sounds great.

I love these speakers. thanks for the help.