W.A.C., on 04 November 2011 - 10:32 PM, said:
HDMI isn't really an option since my monitor's HDMI port is used only for my PS3 and Wii (which also uses an VGA convertor box thing) and I'm too limited in space for an amp. I doubt the sound card is a placebo effect compared to my old one. Main reason I decided to get a new one is because the old one was dying.
I meant using HDMI out from your videocard to the audio amp. That is provided you have a card/decent onboard video that can do audio bitstreaming (radeon 5k above and geforce 4xx above can do those, dunno about onboards). You can still just use dvi/vga for video otherwise...
Soundcards are only better (if better) than onboard quality-wise because of 1. placebo 2. crap drivers that either force some EQ or are incapable of some basic features / unstable (see: anything by Creative) 3. they have a front panel which either has a digital connection or a properly shielded analog one - this is assuming you use the front panel audio on your case, since those are usually connected with completely unshielded thin cables and pick up absurd amounts of noise. And 4. some hardware defects (inability to do 44.1khz on old soundblasters from the live/audigy line)
Some cards may also have a higher signal to noise ratio and other statistics like that, but 99% of the time you can't hear the difference that those make.
Chibisteven, on 05 November 2011 - 05:41 AM, said:
*laughs* Well consider that some people have small work stations and desks.
Let me ask you this? If you had a small room to work in and need professional recording and didn't mind shelling $200-$1,000 for such a card and getting adapters just to rip from a Genesis, would you do it? Considering you would good analog-to-digital equipment if you were to rip from real Genesis hardware. And no crappy compress to lossy format from emulator don't count. Get used to 2 seperate 1/4' TSL connectors for both left and right.
Or you like surround sound and have a small area where you could only fit 5 small speakers around yourself and a sub under the desk, you would need something that had lime, black, and orange 1/8' TSL connectors on the back of the sound card that connected to powered speakers. It's grey for the side speakers in 7.1 systems. You can usually get such cards for around $100 or more or even find it in some motherboard solutions with some having 192K rates and 24-bit audio. Though the SNR of such consumer grade cards are laughable and exerated for recording purposes. You will find they're often ideal for normal playback conditions and small spaces. More recents cards are alot quieter and suited for playback purposes than early models. They often work great for 2 channel speaker systems as well, just a matter of changing operating system settings.
The HDMI and SPDIF connectors are more for living room or home theature entertainment equipment where there is alot of room. Not for a computer workspace. Some HDMI and similar connectors can only output 2 PCM channels unless it's Dolby Digital or something, so you could shoot yourself in the foot and not a wholelot of different sample rates are supported by some recievers, either. And I can tell you how there's difference between high-end consumer recievers and professional grade ones that are not aviliable to the consumer.
If I had 200-1000$ just like that, I'd save up some more so eventually I can move out of that small work station environment.
If your goal is recording, pretty much any random soundcard can do that equally fine... I did 16bit 96khz recordings from my Megadrive in the past using onboard audio (ALC889a), with a standard 1/8 jack from the megadrive headphone out. Not terribly high-grade equipment, but not much more is needed to record from a Megadrive, considering that it was a noisy model 1 machine. With the same cables and a SB Live I've also did recordings from an old DOS game, which came out with absolutely no noise whatsoever. Granted none of them were 24bit or 192khz, but they sound perfectly fine.
If you use those ridiculous 5.1 sets with a subwoofer and 5x 100 mm3 speakers, then your soundcard will make very little difference quality wise. Incidentally I'm using a set like that, albeit a much bigger variant with more mediocre sound quality. Onboard -> 3x 1/8 jack to stereo RCA converters -> RCA to the speakers. Sounds the same with a discrete sb live, ac97 grade onboard audio, and Azalia grade onboard audio. Using kxproject drivers supercharged the bass on the sb live, but thats something the driver did, not the card or the speakers, and it was very uneven (midrange was missing). Consoles have some noise, but that's because of their own output cables (noise feedback on rgb scart connectors, etc).
Hdmi and spdif are just digital connectors. They work equally fine in computer workspace as they do for home theater equipment, as long as you are aware what they are and how they work.
- SPDIF is limited to 2 channel stereo (16bit 48khz) bandwidth wise, so you either use that or ac3/dts for 5.1. On a computer that would mean either passing through content from your dvds, or games outputting their own dolby digital / dts stream, or your soundcard doing ac3 compression on the fly.
- HDMI can do uncompressed sound of anything up to 36.8mbit/s transfer rate. I don't know what the specs allow for exactly, but based on bandwidth alone, it can do uncompressed 24bit 96khz 7.1 sound or uncompressed 24bit 192khz 5.1 sound. Add in lossless compression and you could probably do 24bit 192khz 7.1 audio but you probably can't find neither equipment to handle that nor listening material in that high fidelty.
They are both completely resistant to analog noise however, since they are DIGITAL connectors. The only quality cable you need is the one leading from the amp to the speakers. Right now I'm using normal rca analog cables, and the system picks up a lot of noise from my machine, though it's only noticable if I max out the volume and listen to the buzz when I move the mouse or when the clockspeed of my videocard ramps up. With an external amp I'd have no noise, since the entire step of converting the digital sound to analog would happen away from my computer. And of course you'd need to look for an amp that can handle the quality you feed it, the same way you are looking for a card that can handle 24/192 quality recording.
Yeah, space is an issue, but I thought we are talking about audiophile equipment here? Not rinky-dink 9x9x9cm plastic speakers?
This post has been edited by Meat Miracle: 05 November 2011 - 06:13 PM
