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I'd say that depends on your audio equipment. With basic computer speaker set or entry level headphones I don't think there will be that huge difference, but if you are using high-quality headphones or amplifier/speaker set with analog outputs, then it's going to be a definitive improvement.
I run my two computers sound through a hometheater amp to a bunch of Paradigm Titan speakers, and onboard Realtek definitely sounds a lot worse than Xonar D2 from my primary computer. It's hard to describe, but the sound from onboard seems to be missing a lot of "layers" that are present with Xonar.
I going to use the sound card with logitech z-4.
e2g said:depends on your audio equipment. Yes....that being said, I have the promedia 2.1 and I too would like to get a sound card for a lot of music listening, movies and some gaming. I do plan, some day to either get some nice headphones or go to a 5.1 setup. So a DX would be of great value for me then?
I have no personal experience with either particular speaker set, but I've found many speaker sets designed to be used with a computer are horrible for music listening. I would rather put my money in a decent pair of bookshelf speakers and an amp or good quality headphones before upgrading the sound card. In my opinion, you are going to miss most of the Xonar's audio quality potential with multimedia speakers.
n00b question: So if I were to get a receiver, does the computer pass 5.1 surround sound via a digital connector and is a digital connector the only way to do this. I know sound cards have like numerous outputs such as "Front," Sub" etc. But you wouldn't wire all of those to a receiver now would you?
You can pass 5.1 signal from soundcard either as analog via multiple RCA cables or as digital with a coax or optical cable. To get 5.1 over digital, the soundcard needs to support Dolby Digital Live or DTS Connect encoding and the receiver needs to be able to decode the signal, of course. Xonar, X-Fi Titanium and Prelude all support at least DDL, and Xonar also supports DTS Connect (not sure about the other cards).
Hmm...so connecting it via RCA cables, all of the decoding and such is done in the sound card. Using a digital connection, the decoding is done in the receiver. So wouldn't the logical thing to do, if you have a Xonar DX and a really nice receiver, to pass it via a digital connection since (I would assume) the receiver can do a better job decoding that stuff? Or is that a disadvantage to the software on your pc (e.g. games, movies-powerdvd..)?
Thanks
Well, the sound card doesn't actually have to decode anything, unless you are getting encoded sound data from external sources, like DVD movie soundtracks.
When you are listening to a MP3 file, or a music CD or playing a game with analog connections, the sound card will send analog signals to the appropriate sound card outputs (front/rear/center+sub/surrounds) and those signals are then transferred to the receiver via the RCA cablest. The cables are connected to the multichannel inputs of the receiver and the receiver knows to direct signal from front left/right input to front left/right speakers etc.
If you are using a digital connection, the sound card first encodes/compresses the channels to a Dolby Digital or DTS digital stream that is passed over the digital connection to the receiver, which in turn decodes/processes the signal and sends it to the appropriate speaker outputs.
There's an excellent pictured guide of different connection methods in Xonar manual, pages 18-25.