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HDMI vs Optical

M

myounage

Weaksauce
Joined
Jun 4, 2010
Messages
106
I'm getting a decent Pioneer receiver tomorrow or the day after, Dwolla withdrawals permitting. Not entry-level but not expensive either. It does HDMI sound, 3D passthrough, etc. My GTX 275 lacks HDMI out, so I'm going to be using optical out from the PC instead. It's going to be hooked up to a decent 5.1 speaker system. How much of a difference is there between optical and HDMI sound? Can I buy a ~$50 Nvidia GPU, throw it in underneath the existing one, and only use it for sound? Would that be worth it? The receiver does all the HDMI-exclusive lossless decoders. Regardless of that, I plan to switch out my 275 for a GTX 680 as soon as those hit market (later this year?).

Is ~$50 on a second GPU just for HDMI out instead of optical out worth it? Or would I be hard pressed to notice any difference?

Also I want a tuner card + remote for bedroom use, since my bedroom TV broke, and I've moved my monitors and computing area across from the bed. Don't really intend to record too much or try and watch multiple channels at once.. It seems like all the ones people don't hate and give terrible reviews to are ~$100. Is it really that hard to make a tuner?
 
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Well optical is limited to 2 channels in lossless or generally 6 channels (5.1) when it's compressed (lossy). The two compressed formats are Dolby digital and DTS. Both are good codecs but they are compressed quite a bit compared to lossless which you can do over HDMI.

Te larger issue is that if you are just using the optical port on your motherboard, then you likely don't have Dolby Dlgital Live or DTS Interactive.

You need one of these systems to be able to encode the sound output from your various programs like video games into either Dolby Digital or DTS respectively. Without one of these technologies, you will be limited to only a stereo audio signal from your video games to your receiver.

You will only be able to transmit surround sound from sources that are already encoded into Dolby Digital or DTS such as movies without DDL or DTS Interactive.
 
HDMI gives you HD audio for blu rays and surround sound for gaming vs optical. I don't care for surround sound PC gaming that much so I don't use my hdmi port.
 
You can use the Hdmi it will be downsampled like it does with optical. The newer Radeon cards can pass thru protected content without downsampling it. Don't know about nvidia.
 
Optical (TOSLINK) supports up to 125 Mbps now. Finding a peice of PC hardware with the updated specs is going to be hard, if not impossible. I think they realize that people kind of abandoned it for HDMI because of being able to take care of video and audio on one cable. And copy protection...
 
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SirMaster said:
Well optical is limited to 2 channels in lossless or generally 6 channels (5.1) when it's compressed (lossy). The two compressed formats are Dolby digital and DTS. Both are good codecs but they are compressed quite a bit compared to lossless which you can do over HDMI.

Te larger issue is that if you are just using the optical port on your motherboard, then you likely don't have Dolby Dlgital Live or DTS Interactive.

You need one of these systems to be able to encode the sound output from your various programs like video games into either Dolby Digital or DTS respectively. Without one of these technologies, you will be limited to only a stereo audio signal from your video games to your receiver.

You will only be able to transmit surround sound from sources that are already encoded into Dolby Digital or DTS such as movies without DDL or DTS Interactive.
Click to expand...

Motherboard does support DTS, actually, and Dolby Digital as well.
 
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SirMaster said:
Not just Dolby Digital and DTS codecs as every optical output will support those.

You need Dolby Digital Live and/or DTS-Interactive in order to get 5.1 from video games across optical.

http://www.dolby.com/consumer/understand/playback/dolby-digital-live.html

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DTS_(sound_system)#DTS_Connect
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not with bc 2 you don't. And you can buy a $30 device from amazon that can do it for games as well. Not going to say its name some people will have their monthly periods again
 
Spooony said:
not with bc 2 you don't. And you can buy a $30 device from amazon that can do it for games as well. Not going to say its name some people will have their monthly periods again
Click to expand...

Name would be excellent. That said, it doesn't look like my sound card can do 5.1 over optical :(. Will a $30 Geforce 210 do the job over HDMI? Can I plug it in at the same time as my 275 for audio use and not have windows / NV drivers go apeshit? My PC does not have a Blu-Ray Drive (with no plans to add one either), so protected Blu-Ray tracks are a non-issue. However, I do have Netflix. Would I be able to listen to surround sound from Netflix with a 210? Or would that require a Radeon 5xxx / 6xxx (which I absolutely will not buy, since I have no desire to upgrade my GPU until the next generation) for Netflix?
 
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The Nvidia 210 will handle HDMI passthrough and decode 1080p fully in hardware. It's pretty good for an HTPC application, I am very happy with mine, you can even get fanless ones. As for getting Dolby Digital Live over S/PDIF for gaming, the Xonar DG is dirt cheap and does this, and some other stuff too.
 
myounage said:
Name would be excellent. That said, it doesn't look like my sound card can do 5.1 over optical :(. Will a $30 Geforce 210 do the job over HDMI? Can I plug it in at the same time as my 275 for audio use and not have windows / NV drivers go apeshit? My PC does not have a Blu-Ray Drive (with no plans to add one either), so protected Blu-Ray tracks are a non-issue. However, I do have Netflix. Would I be able to listen to surround sound from Netflix with a 210? Or would that require a Radeon 5xxx / 6xxx (which I absolutely will not buy, since I have no desire to upgrade my GPU until the next generation) for Netflix?
Click to expand...

Does Netflix stream multi-channel sound now? I thought they only stream stereo.

Edit: Well, damn, I must have missed that they switched over. I've been missing out for half a year now.
 
myounage said:
Will this do the job perhaps? EDIT: Nope, it won't. No DTS-i or DDL. I'd *love* a "$30 DDL encoder" though.
The Asus XOnar U1 sounds fantastic, but can't get it without it being bundled with some headphones I don't need. As far as sound cards go I want external for laptop use and I'm looking at this: http://www.amazon.com/Creative-Soundblaster-Surround-System-SB1095/dp/B0044DEDCA/ref=pd_sim_pc_1
Click to expand...

it was available but not anymore
http://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/B002651ZEM/184-2131571-7902439?pd=1&l=Product Details
 
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myounage said:
AH, I see why people didn't like it. It bridged from the PC's analogue outputs. So the chain was Digital->anallogue->digital->analogue, rather than just digital-analogue a la a proper connection between receiver and PC. I went ahead and ordered their 5.1 external X-Fi card though.
Click to expand...
that's was the only way to get 5.1 on your surround.
a soundcard does the same when it apply ddl to it basically. It has to process the game audio then convert and upmix then sent it to the receiver. Ddl with a soundcard doesn't sound that good as with that device. But most of the games coming out now start making use of their own Codecs. Plus console ports are getting released by the masses. Another thing is when the game use hardware acceleration with the card and the audio gets done by THX or EAX or whatever it gets send to the cards analog output. A lot of people think its just hooking the receiver up and your dolby and all those lights light up but its not. They just think so
 
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