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3.5mm vs SPDIF?

O

Oneiros

n00b
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Feb 3, 2011
Messages
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I apologize in advance, but I'd like to ask a pretty general question that I haven't been able to get properly answered by my Google results:

What are the pros and cons between having a computer connected to a home theatre receiver via the 3.5mm analog connections, versus running the sound through SPDIF?

Here's the (extensive) background behind my question.

Years upon years ago, I got my first home theatre receiver, a JVC RX-7030VBK, and I declared it Good. It wasn't connected to my computer, just my dvd player at the time. However, a few years ago I moved to a smaller space and got myself a new computer. The relevant hardware to our discussion is that it had an ASUS Striker Extreme motherboard, which came with a Soundmax ADI 1988B soundcard. I decided to make better use of the smaller space and hooked the computer up to the receiver for sound. I went with the simple connector solution and used a digital coax cable to go from the computer to the receiver. Looking back at forum posts, I must have just missed some horrendous driver trouble, because I got surround sound just fine from games and movies alike. Incidentally, the Soundmax was set to encode into DTS and send that to the receiver.

So fast forward to present day. Many happy years have been spent, and plenty of PC games have been played, all with delightful surround sound (which helps FPS games immensely). However, I recently picked up Bulletstorm, and despite its many bugs and poor implementation of things like configuration inis, I managed to get it running perfectly except for the sound: I only got stereo.

This was a first for me... if a game had surround, I heard surround. The only time I ever had to deal with the settings or drivers was when I installed a new version of Windows (currently on 7). But Bulletstorm was different. After much discussion on game-related forums, it was suggested that instead of using SPDIF and relying on the encoding by the hardware, I should connect via the discrete analog to the receiver and set the receiver for passthrough. Pow, surround worked.

So now I'm wondering what practical differences there are between the two connection types. I'm not entirely sure, but I THINK it sounds a little better with the analog connectors. In addition, the receiver is old, and when it starts getting a DTS or DD signal you miss a split second of the sound before it starts playing. As a result, any "ding" sound from Windows ended up as "ng". Not anymore, no delays now. And the overall sound level is even when I switch over to the Playstation 3 connected to the same receiver. With the SPDIF connection the volume difference was 20 points on the dial. Very minor details, but it's a nice change.

Would any helpful souls like to pitch in with their thoughts on the matter? I'm not going back to SPDIF for awhile (at least until I get bored of Bulletstorm), but I'm really curious now as to the practical differences, whether the analog is (paradoxically, to my mind) better than the digital, things like that.

Again, sorry for the (possibly unnecessarily) long post, and thanks to anyone who participates.
 
I am also curious as to the answer to this question, as I was going to pose the same question.

I always thought that analog could only carry two channels...
 
FMX said:
I am also curious as to the answer to this question, as I was going to pose the same question.

I always thought that analog could only carry two channels...
Click to expand...

In this context analog is single channel. Depends where the DAC processing takes place and which device has better DAC. If you have a good sound card, yea by all means go ahead and use the analog outs to feed your receiver otherwise always feed the SPDIF to your receiver as far as connections go, the rest of the issues are then mitigated playing with settings on each device end (Soundcard or receiver). Not sure if I answered your q.
 
FMX said:
I am also curious as to the answer to this question, as I was going to pose the same question.

I always thought that analog could only carry two channels...
Click to expand...

I believe analog only does carry two channels, which is why when I mean multichannel analog, I'm referring to the multiple 3.5mm ports on the back of most soundcards these days. Green for forward left/right, black for rear left/right, and yellow for center/subwoofer. For each of those connections, the 3.5mm end of the cable goes into the computer, while the other end, which has the red/white RCA connectors, goes into the appropriate ports on the receiver.

If you go to this website and scroll down to "Connect and configure surround sound for multichannel analog" you'll see the two diagrams of what I'm referring to.

http://www.microsoft.com/windowsxp/using/mce/expert/connect_av.mspx

ghitz said:
Not sure if I answered your q.
Click to expand...

To be completely honest, I'm not sure what I'm asking either. :) I'm just looking for information. For instance, I'm curious to know if the range of multichannel analog is greater than SPDIF. I would think that a DTS signal over SPDIF gets encoded, decoded, compressed and decompressed a few times, so that the sound isn't as good as with a direct output of multichannel analog. Not that I'm a serious audiophile, as you can tell by the ancient and cheap receiver I'm still content to use, but I like to know these things.
 
Dolby Digital and DTS are compressed codecs like MP3. Analog is raw lossless audio.

When you use analog, you are using the DAC in your sound card. When you you use S/PDIF, you are using the DAC in your receiver.

There is a balance between quality, but assuming the DACs are of the same quality, the analog would then sound a lot better.

If the DAC in your sound card is worse, it may or may not sound better overall because you still have to factor in that the analog signal is a better signal.

If it sounds better to you via analog, then it probably is better.
 
OK I see. So yeah in fact your Soundcard output has multiple 1/8" connectors usually each output will supply you 2 channels except maybe the LFE (sub out) which is mono, single channel feeding a sub. Depending on your soundcard or your source file most soundcards like x-fi titanium for ex., will provide you with 7.1 channels of analog (decoded and converted) or 7.1 channels digital out which will be offloaded to your receiver for decoding and conversion. So in your case the Asus Striker Extreme has 7.1 analog out and honestly I'm not sure which is better in this case at decoding/conversion but it's probably just simpler to continue to use the digital out to feed the receiver.
 
One more question:

What's the benefit of using Dolby Digital Live or DTS Connect over multichannel analog? If (as it seems to me) you get a better range of sound with analog, why use encoded SPDIF? I'm playing Dead Space 2 and Bulletstorm since I switched connections, and they sound almost the same, so why have either of the two encoders?
 
Dolby Digital Live and DTS Connect are really made for the people who only want to use one cable to connect their audio system.

Also, most people don't have a receiver that has multi-channel analog inputs (but they all have at least 1 S/PDIF input). Analog are actually going away and being replaced by HDMI inputs.

Although HDMI trumps both S/PDIF and analog as HDMI allows up to 8 channels of raw uncompressed audio at 24-bit and 96KHz
 
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