HDMI + Soundcard Questions

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chinkecheese

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Oct 23, 2007
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Hello all! I have a home theatre setup in my other room, and I have an HDMI cord running through the wall to the next room to my reciever+projector.

I own the XFi-Prelude, and I've noticed that when I'm on my projector, the only way I can get sound is if I use the High Definition Audio Device - which I'm assuming is the video card's audio processor.

My question is, I would really enjoy using the my sound card vs my videocard for sound. Is there a way to do this? I'd like to take advantage of my equipment.

If it helps, my receiver is the Denon 1612
 
Can you not run a physical cable from the sound card to the projector?

And do you think running a SPDIF cable from the soundcard to the GPU would work?

Potentially relevant link:
http://www.hardwaresecrets.com/article/546

This is just a shot in the dark and I'm not even sure if it'll work so hopefully someone else can help you.
 
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I may be able to use the spdif cable from my soundcard to my receiver, i think. I'm not entirely sure.
 
bump - tried the spdif, doesn't work. I'm sure some one here has an HTPC and uses their sound card vs videocard chip.
 
You want to use hdmi. Unless you have an ElCheapo receiver, it has a better DAC.
 
Correct me if I'm wrong but since both SPDIF and HDMI are digital does it matter if your using your sound card vs the video card to transport the audio? I would think in that case only the receiver mattered.
 
Interesting. Sorry - I'm a bit new to all things audio. So what you say that with my current setup, my X-fi prelude is a bit obsolete?
 
devman said:
Correct me if I'm wrong but since both SPDIF and HDMI are digital does it matter if your using your sound card vs the video card to transport the audio? I would think in that case only the receiver mattered.
Click to expand...

Sort of correct

SPDIF, due to being a very old standard that should have been deprecated a decade or more ago...is bandwidth limited in PCM mode to only 2-channel stereo at 48kHz. How you get 2.1 or more channels over it is via lossy compression.

HDMI can do 5.1 in PCM without breaking a sweat. Thus you can do gaming and movies etc in surround without a problem...unlike the DDL and DTS codecs necessary to get SPDIF working.

Now the DAC end of things is still the same, as you're offloading the DAC duties to another device downstream. But SPDIF is a pain to get working....and if you have HDMI working there is absolutely no reason to put up with it.

chinkecheese said:
Interesting. Sorry - I'm a bit new to all things audio. So what you say that with my current setup, my X-fi prelude is a bit obsolete?
Click to expand...

Obsolete? Not so much as the DAC in your AVR is probably simply better than your soundcard.

As I said...unless there is some overwhelming reason to use your soundcard...don't bother with SPDIF. You have working HDMI by the sounds of it, and that is a superior interface for most consumer usage IMHO.
 
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