Sound card DAC or reciever DAC?

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pugsley1218

Limp Gawd
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Apr 30, 2006
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I have a $60 XFI Xtrememusic sound card. I have a $350 Denon-AVR688 home theater receiver that I am going to be using for all my music I'm playing through the computer. Would it be better to connect it via analog (RCA plugs?) which would be using the DAC on my XFI card, or would it be best to connect it with an optical cable so it uses the DAC built into my Denon amp?

I tried testing the sound on both, and they sound about the same, but I think I'm slightly leaning towards using the Denon amp's DAC. I don't know if it's just me imagining the difference though lol, they're both very similar. Is optical the way to go?
 
Use the receiver via optical/coaxial. Btw, when you say they sound similar, what are you testing it with? I can say that limes and lemons taste similar, but that could just be because I got a particularly sour lime or non-sour lemon. It's not very scientific.
 
The Denon will more than likely have a higher quality DAC in it. However, I have a Xonar D2X hooked up to my Yamaha RX-V1400 and I am using the analog out on my soundcard so I can make use of the DAC from the soundcard.

I am not saying that my receiver's DAC is any worse than the Xonar soundcards, but the soundcard software allows me more freedom to adjust the sound profile of my speakers to conform to my room. To be honest it is a matter of taste, but I would go with the Denon receiver DAC parts before I would trust anything Creative.

It's not that I don't think Creative makes decent products, I just absolutely hate the company and how they run it. Sorry for the rant. Just my two cents.
 
The Denon, hands down. If you do end up going that route, and you have optical out on your mobo, you can just use that and sell that soundcard.
 
Does the ExtremeMusic card have the ability to convert 5.1 to DDL/DTS?
If not, the op will lose 5.1 gaming sounds using digital.
 
Nenu said:
Does the ExtremeMusic card have the ability to convert 5.1 to DDL/DTS?
If not, the op will lose 5.1 gaming sounds using digital.
Click to expand...

If he is asking about using DAC's, or even know's what a DAC is, I assumed he is more interested in sound quality over gimicky gaming DSP's. Thats just my opinion.
 
It may matter a lot to the op, so its worth mentioning.
If not I would try both and see which sounds better.
The reason for that is:
Even though the DAC in the amp is likely to be better, there is loss from converting the sound to 48KHz 16bit for SPDIF rather than being directly converted to analogue on the card.
Analogue may still hold a candle.

If digital does sound better, the op could switch to analogue for gaming to get 5.1, best of both worlds then.
Assuming its not too big a pain to have both wired and to switch manually.
 
Well he IS using analog in the end, he is just wondering what DAC would be better to do the conversion from digital. S/PDIF out of the computer sends a bit for bit perfect signal out to the receiver, so I don't see how it could sound worse.
 
Soz, I meant to say that for BluRay and other higher bitrate/resolution material, analogue out from the Soundcard could well sound better as SPDIF is converted down to max of 48KHz 16bit.

edit:
Forgot to mention that soundcards can do 24bit 96Khz but only in stereo.
Hi-def surround sources are limited to 48/16 due to bandwidth limitation.
 
Are there soundcards that convert down bit-rate via digital? I didn't know that. Why the hell would they do that?
 
Well yes, in that case if he want's to send DD THD, and DTS MA to his receiver, he would need to look into a HDMI solution.
 
Nenu said:
Soz, I meant to say that for BluRay and other higher bitrate/resolution material, analogue out from the Soundcard could well sound better as SPDIF is converted down to max of 48KHz 16bit.

edit:
Forgot to mention that soundcards can do 24bit 96Khz but only in stereo.
Hi-def surround sources are limited to 48/16 due to bandwidth limitation.
Click to expand...

Ah. Thanks for the explanation.
 
criccio said:
Well yes, in that case if he want's to send DD THD, and DTS MA to his receiver, he would need to look into a HDMI solution.
Click to expand...

I've struggled with the same issue as I have no HDMI audio, hence no way to send uncompressed LPCM let alone any HD audio codec to my amp.
I have however got an Auzentech Prelude which can decode in top quality to analogue and feed that into the amp instead :)

HDMI audio isnt necessary for HD sound.
Neither is support for HD audio codecs over HDMI as LPCM is just as good as long as it isnt re-sampled before being sent.
PC's and HD audio arent straightforward.

To my knowledge there arent ANY soundcards that can send Dolby TrueHD and DTS-HD Master Audio direct to the receiver.
The Hi-Def sound has to be decoded on the PC and fed to the amp as LPCM.
Sadly software like PowerDVD downsamples the audio.

If you need to take the digital route for Hi-Def audio, there is a soundcard that will perform the HD audio conversion, feeding full bitrate LPCM to the amp.
Its the Asus Xonar HDAV1.3
http://www.itechnews.net/2008/06/18/asus-xonar-hdav13-hdmi-sound-card/#more-11109
Runs on a PCI Express x1 slot, the Xonar HDAV1.3 is able to decode Dolby TrueHD and DTS-HD Master Audio at 24-bit, 96-192 Khz and deliver up to 7.1 channel of surround sound. It is powered by Asus AV200 codec chip.
Click to expand...
I dont know of any other soundcards that are available now that can do this.
 
So if you're not using a receiver and are opting to just sending analog from soundcard to amp then amped signal to speakers, you don't need to worry about buying the proper soundcard that will do the digital downsampling and reducing DD and DTS to rubbish?
 
I am mainly concerned about music. I don't really care as much about the gaming side of the XFI card. There is no resampling being done when it's getting sent to my receiver, because I have kernel streaming turned on, so it sends it exactly bit for bit. I'm still going to keep the XFI card and use the SPDIF out on it, since it supports 24bit/96khz, and my built in motherboard one only does 48khz.
 
Alai, you can use a receiver for 5.1 via analogue and any amp for stereo.
All my surround receivers have had 5.1 analogue in.

If you want top quality sound from hidef sources it can be done via analogue but the quality will vary depending on what decodes/processes the HD audio and you will also need a soundcard with top quality analogue out.
A lower quality soundcard will sound better but to get the most from Hi-def sound, a good soundcard is worth getting.
As the current crop of BluRay players downsample HiDef audio, its better to convert the movies to mkv format with LPCM sound so you dont need to use a Blu Ray player.

I am currently re-encoding my Blu Ray disks to x264 mkv, losslessly converting the hidef sound to LPCM so there is no ambiguity on the quality.
Playing back with MPC-HD accelerates video playback and passes the LPCM uncompressed straight to the soundcard (for analogue) for top quality sound.


Cards like the new Xonar (and hopefully Auzentechs new card due in early 2009) make the process much simpler.
Both require an HDMI connection to the amp though.

Also it is reported that PowerDVD 8.5 wont downsample Hi-def Blu Ray sound but that remains to be seen.


OP, I just read your last post.
If you dont care about surround sound, use which connection method sounds best for you.
 
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