what sound card for best Quality with DVD`s + EAX5
- Thread starter jamieuk23
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Its a tricky subject as to which type of interconnect is "best"
With high quality cabling and very good circuitry (OP-AMPS etc) it could be argued that an analogue connection is more desirable than a digital one. Digital connections invariably have to compress the RAW PCM audio to a more manageable bitrate, I think around 700KBps for Dolby Digital etc, however the good thing is that even using the cheapest nastiest digital cable its either going to be perfect or not work at all.
The X-Fi cannot pass EAX type surround through the digital connection, this requires a hardware encoding chip to take the analogue channels in real time and convert it into a compatible Dolby or DTS audio stream. It can only pass content already encoded, such as that found on DVD's etc.
There are options, depending on how much you want to spend. The new Auzentech Prelude has an X-Fi chip, so you dont loose out on the latest EAX etc but it also has a hardware chip to encode to dolby live or DTS on the fly. Or there are cheaper Auzentech cards that can do the same but from a C-Media chip (i.e. you lose most of the EAX goodness from X-Fi cards and get orrible drivers etc.)
Personally I use an X-Fi and have a analogue connection AND a digital connection to my speakers. That way when im playing non encoded audio I leave it on analogue input, then when I want to play encoded audio, through a DVD or on the rare occasion a game has a Dolby soundtrack etc, I can switch to my digital in (The X-Fi allows both types of output to be enabled at the same time, so you dont need to mess with the software once its all setup).
With high quality cabling and very good circuitry (OP-AMPS etc) it could be argued that an analogue connection is more desirable than a digital one. Digital connections invariably have to compress the RAW PCM audio to a more manageable bitrate, I think around 700KBps for Dolby Digital etc, however the good thing is that even using the cheapest nastiest digital cable its either going to be perfect or not work at all.
The X-Fi cannot pass EAX type surround through the digital connection, this requires a hardware encoding chip to take the analogue channels in real time and convert it into a compatible Dolby or DTS audio stream. It can only pass content already encoded, such as that found on DVD's etc.
There are options, depending on how much you want to spend. The new Auzentech Prelude has an X-Fi chip, so you dont loose out on the latest EAX etc but it also has a hardware chip to encode to dolby live or DTS on the fly. Or there are cheaper Auzentech cards that can do the same but from a C-Media chip (i.e. you lose most of the EAX goodness from X-Fi cards and get orrible drivers etc.)
Personally I use an X-Fi and have a analogue connection AND a digital connection to my speakers. That way when im playing non encoded audio I leave it on analogue input, then when I want to play encoded audio, through a DVD or on the rare occasion a game has a Dolby soundtrack etc, I can switch to my digital in (The X-Fi allows both types of output to be enabled at the same time, so you dont need to mess with the software once its all setup).
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analogue vs digital.
in this instance, it come down to how good your amplifier is with an analogue input and how good its DAC's are when converting digital to analogue.
if youve got a half decent av amp, you'll almost certainly be better off passing ditial to the amp and letting the amp handle it - the generally do a much better job at decoding the formats than decoding at the pc and and passing te analogue to the amp.
thats not true at all. it might be for HD formats, but as far as dvd is concerned spdif will pass the bitstream without alteration. dolby digital has a maximum bitrate of 640kbps btw
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For gaming its....complicated lol.i've said this in another thread, the xfi's were king until vista dropped support for direct sound. now its openAL and thats what future games will all be supporting, making this whole EAX thing a non-issue. at which point, it'll be down to the quality of the analogue outputs (amounts other things, number of hardware sound channels ect). if i were you, id get the card with the best quality analogue outputs you can, and like manic_man use analogue for games and digital for movies.
in this instance, it come down to how good your amplifier is with an analogue input and how good its DAC's are when converting digital to analogue.
if youve got a half decent av amp, you'll almost certainly be better off passing ditial to the amp and letting the amp handle it - the generally do a much better job at decoding the formats than decoding at the pc and and passing te analogue to the amp.
thats not true at all. it might be for HD formats, but as far as dvd is concerned spdif will pass the bitstream without alteration. dolby digital has a maximum bitrate of 640kbps btw
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For gaming its....complicated lol.i've said this in another thread, the xfi's were king until vista dropped support for direct sound. now its openAL and thats what future games will all be supporting, making this whole EAX thing a non-issue. at which point, it'll be down to the quality of the analogue outputs (amounts other things, number of hardware sound channels ect). if i were you, id get the card with the best quality analogue outputs you can, and like manic_man use analogue for games and digital for movies.
Perhaps i should have been more clear. This is exactly what I meant. The bitstream will be compressed so that it can successfully be passed in serial form along either an SP-DIF or Co-Axial digital connection, both standards im sure will provide an upper maximum data throughput limit, which some hardware wll surpass but all will meet. In this case a throughput of 640kbps (as you quite rightly corrected me on) would appear to be the lowest common maximum throughput for all standards in all situations using the Dolby compression format.
All i was trying to point out was that on paper digital appears better in every situation, but in actuality a decent analogue setup *could* provide higher highs and lower lows due to the compression applied with digital formats.
Im sure the HDMI interface provides even more bandwidth, so this will eventually increase the standard bitrate, but a digital connection will always be truncated as it simply isnt possible to perfectly store a waveform due to the infinate numerical possibilities that can exist at any one point.
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no it wont be compressed? its read from the dvd and passed stright through the sdpif interface, the pc doesnt do anything with it. in this case, there is no way to achieve a higher 'bitrate' with analogue.
that digital format is read straight form the dvd, so it makes no difference.
HDMI 1.3 has a single link bandwidth of 10.2gbps vs the ~9.2mbps of spdif. standard bitrates on dvd's will not change, its a feature set in stone of the various audio formats. new formats such as trueHD or DTS MA have huge bandwidth requirements (up to 24mbps for DTS MA) so obviously that cant be delivered over spdif at all.
regardless, this isnt about hd formats. its purely regarding dvd
no it wont be compressed? its read from the dvd and passed stright through the sdpif interface, the pc doesnt do anything with it. in this case, there is no way to achieve a higher 'bitrate' with analogue.
that digital format is read straight form the dvd, so it makes no difference.
HDMI 1.3 has a single link bandwidth of 10.2gbps vs the ~9.2mbps of spdif. standard bitrates on dvd's will not change, its a feature set in stone of the various audio formats. new formats such as trueHD or DTS MA have huge bandwidth requirements (up to 24mbps for DTS MA) so obviously that cant be delivered over spdif at all.
regardless, this isnt about hd formats. its purely regarding dvd
You know that dts / dolby digital sound is a compressed audio format on the dvd ?
its true the pc doesnt worry about the compression, but its is sending the compressed data direct from the dvd to the amp via spdif. Its possable that the digital bitrate suffers too if theres more then one audio stream on the disk to fit them all on. dts/dolby, multilanguage.
As too which is better...ill take the digital stream, its purly upto the amp/speaker setup to get the best sound then. With analogue you have to have good dacs in pc, good cable as well as good amp. Analogue isnt without its limits either. Only so much sound you can capture in a 24bit 192k audio stream
Soldato
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yes thats why i said analogue wont do any better
he was talking about he audio being compressed so it can be transferred over the spdif interface- that isnt true
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Soldato
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no, you'll get whatever the soundcard can support. ie: if its a 7.1 soundcard, you can output 7.1 formats
Associate
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Have just installed a Soundblaster X-Fi into my media center as I upgraded to VMC. I am amazed at the quality of sound that comes out of it. Truly awesome. http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showproduct.php?prodid=SC-043-CL&groupid=701&catid=11&subcat=
Unless I'm mistaken EAX5 is supported via OpenAL on Creative chips only (X-Fi Xtreme Music & upwards along with the Auzentech Prelude), so it still means that Creative based cards are top of the list when it comes to gaming. Just because a cheapo software card supports OpenAL doesn't mean it'll suddenly produce all the effects EAX5 does.
Correct me if I'm wrong with the above, that's the way I see it at least.
Soldato
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i dont know. i'll look in to that
doubtful. performance is virtually identical to an x-fi fatality. is it worth moving from a music to a fatality?
as i want it manily for games I just seen this one Creative X-Fi Xtreme Gamer card. would you go for this your self or wait for the Prelude ?
I am asking as not because I am fussy but because I honestly havent got a clue which is better for games with working with my amp
do you have one of the new Onkyo amps ?? I just got the 805
I am asking as not because I am fussy but because I honestly havent got a clue which is better for games with working with my amp
do you have one of the new Onkyo amps ?? I just got the 805
just for the record, im 100% aware that the audio is pre compressed and the digital out just passes it along, I clearly wasnt stating myself properly, sorry.
Either way, in my opinion, a analogue / digital combo from a basic X-FI (but not the very bottom music model) is the way to go for 95% of people.
ALso, the EAX5 thing via OpenAL is correct. MS have removed DS support, which EAX has always used in the past, but it is perfectly possible for it to be enabled via OpenAL. Game manu's will be using OpenAL more or less from now on i'd imagine. For the remaining older DS supported EAX games, ALchemy provides a pretty good bridge between the directsound interface and the OpenAL one .
Either way, in my opinion, a analogue / digital combo from a basic X-FI (but not the very bottom music model) is the way to go for 95% of people.
ALso, the EAX5 thing via OpenAL is correct. MS have removed DS support, which EAX has always used in the past, but it is perfectly possible for it to be enabled via OpenAL. Game manu's will be using OpenAL more or less from now on i'd imagine. For the remaining older DS supported EAX games, ALchemy provides a pretty good bridge between the directsound interface and the OpenAL one .
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