Vista64 Optical Out Soundcard?

SH4RKY

SH4RKY

SH4RKY

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I have the Asus P5Q PRO mobo and unfortunately one of the down sides is that it doesn't have an optical out... :(

Which means I need a sound card with an optical out so I can send music to my Home Cinema amp or Headphone Amp, depending on what mood im in.

Both have very good DACs so really I just need the sound card to output a clean and good Optical source. I guess Dolby Digital or DTS would be nice as the Cinema amp can deal with that.


So... Can anyone recommend a decent and relatively cheap sound card, with an optical out, that is fully vista 64 compatible?
 
Was aiming for the £50 mark, but thanks for the heads up, read a few reviews and it does look nice :)

I'm thinking about an Auzentech X-Plosion Cinema 7.1 or an ASUS Xonar DX or D1.

Depends which is the most stable and reliable in Vista 64 with music and games and also offers the best Optical Out source...
 
Cool, thanks for the heads up. A driver free sound card does sound tempting after all the problems you read with sound card drivers.
 
SH4RKY said:
Cool, thanks for the heads up. A driver free sound card does sound tempting after all the problems you read with sound card drivers.
Click to expand...

Xonar has no driver issues under Vista x64, the only cards which you should be happy they don't require drivers are Creative ones!! :p

Pretty sure the Xonar DX came with a toslink adapter for optical out, I can't be 100% sure about this. The more expensive Xonars do have optical out though without needing an adapter. (I believe)
 
Yeah, I believe the cheaper Xonars do have an optical out, but its the little headphone jack type version, I think they give you a converter to change it into the usual toslink shaped nose:

Xonar D1
Digital S/PDIF Output:
High-bandwidth TOS-Link optical transmitter (shared with Line-In/Mic-In jack) supports 192KHz/24bit
and under accesories: 1 x S/PDIF optical adaptors


After installing my GPU last night, I don't have much room to use the PCIE slots, so I may be limited to PCI only sound cards too.
 
SPDIF is a method of sending data, done so over TOSLINK. The P5Q already comes with optical out using a standard toslink connecter. Provided you have a toslink cable already you should be good to go.
 
S/PDIF quality varies between implementation though (due to levels of jitter causing timing errors, and the fact there is no error correction whatsoever). The card I bought does actually produce better sound quality over S/PDIF compared to my motherboard's solution.
 
Have to butt-in with a silly, but also valid answer, but I have just a few days back been given a whole load of PC Bits and among them, is a very cheap nasty and tacky trust SoundCard... Its got the usual 5 x 3.5mm sockets at the back, for 5.1 and Mic/Line In and the old Midi/Game port, but connected via a smal lribbon, is a Digital expansion with COAX I/O and Optical I/O

It cost the guy £14.99 new some time ago and he has been using just fine in Vista64 for the past 8months with no issues at all.

Got to be better than the Creative options I suppose?
 
the thing is, with the way vista handles sound, all of it is processed in software because the OS denies base-level access to the hardware for sound, which means that onboard optical out would be JUST as good as optical out on the most expensive Xonar available if you use vista, because it's all decoded in software anyway :(
 
No, not quite...

If you played a sound, even a poor quality MP3 through both Analog and the Digital Outputs, you will find that the Digital outputs ( Optical or Coaxial ) are much clearer.
 
FatRakoon said:
No, not quite...

If you played a sound, even a poor quality MP3 through both Analog and the Digital Outputs, you will find that the Digital outputs ( Optical or Coaxial ) are much clearer.
Click to expand...

not what i said though.

what i said was, Digital out from onboard or from the most expensive Xonar or x-fi while using Vista will have identical quality.
 
Sorry, yes, reading that again, you did say that yes.

Appologies.

The way I read it, you were saying that the Analog was the same as the digital.

Then again, what you are then also saying, is that, under Vista, there is no difference between the Onboard Audio, and a Xonar / X-FI etc ?

That cant be right surely?
 
Aod said:
not what i said though.

what i said was, Digital out from onboard or from the most expensive Xonar or x-fi while using Vista will have identical quality.
Click to expand...

No, it won't. Although the audio signal is in digital format, the sound quality is still subject to degradation. One reason for this is that the data is transferred in real time, with no error correction - so there is the potential for audio artifacts. The main cause however is due to signal jitter, where the timing of the data gets skewed (usually due to poor/average connector implementation, cables, or EMI/noisy power source). This can cause music to sound a bit 'smeared', thus reducing the clarity somewhat.

Regarding Vista: yes, all the mixing is done by the O/S (except with OpenAL). It also does it considerably better than XP's mixer does. This has no bearing on digital output at the hardware level though.
 
The P5Q Pro doesn't have an optical output. The digital output is a Coax. I have a 10m Optical cable, I'm not going to buy a 10m Coax as it will be subject to more degradation than the optical... plus it will be expensive.

After reading the Mobos manual i have found out there is an optional optical output header (where to buy it from I have no idea) that can be plugged into the mobo and will sit in one of the rear expansion slots of the case.
This is probably the cheapest and easiest method of getting an optical output from the PC... However I am still interested in clearing up or getting the best output I can for my budget as it will be feeding a dedicated headphone amp and a reference set of headphones.


So will a Xonar or similar give a better digital output for my headphones or home cinema amp but the same analogue signal as the mobo would for my little 2.1 pc speakers...??
 
While I do know that Vista does take a lot of control over the Audio and does indeed process the Audio signal, I cannot accept that the quality will be the same on a low end setup as it will on a high end one, be it optical, coaxial, analog or horlicks.
 
Just been twonking about with comparing Analog and Digital on a couple of setups, and I can safely say that its absolute bull about the quality.

The Xonar will absolutely kill any low end stuff.

Sure, mobos these days are very high quality, but to compare them with a dedicated card is simply ridiculous.

They are the Audio equivalent to onboard VGA... There are some great solutions out there, but you wouldne want to say that your onboard VGA is better than your VGA Card would you?
 
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