Optical vs hdmi audio

delpy8

delpy8

delpy8

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Hi forum getting a new amp delivered on friday

I wanting to know if i will get better sound via graphics card audio with hdmi out or from the optical from my sound cards 1 is an asus xonar Ds and the other is optical out on mainboard of asus max iv extreme

Cheers
 
I am not a pro on sound issue's but I would personally of said that a dedicated card
would have given better sound than on board via the motherboard.
 
The sound is digital so whatever makes it through will sound EXACTLY the same over either. Its just a data stream, neither device decodes it, that's what your amp does.
As above whilst Dolby digital and DTS will sound exactly the same over HDMI or Optical HDMI outputs can in some instances support HD audio as well.

If you were outputting analogue sound then you would be better off with a dedicated card but this is not applicable to digital sound.
 
HDMI is the better connection these days. S/PDIF (AKA optical toslink) was designed for stereo PCM only, to send multi-channel audio you're required to encode and compress the audio (Dolby Digital, DTS). HDMI was made with audio and video in mind, as of 1.4 you can send 7.1 PCM and 120hz video via the cable making it superior to optical if you want to send more than just stereo audio.
 
Jaap74 said:
S/PDIF can send multichannel audio
Click to expand...

No it really can't, it can only send stereo PCM. Anything else is just encoded gobbledygook (DTS, DD) which is either pre-encoded (movies) or encoded on the fly (expensive sound card). The S/PDIF specifications were designed so that it had enough bandwidth to transfer stereo only.

HDMI on the other hand was designed to take multiple channels in PCM, a maximum of 9.1 @ 48KHz, 5.1 @ 96KHz and stereo @ 192KHz without having to convert it to said gobbledygook.
 
Auraomega said:
No it really can't, it can only send stereo PCM. Anything else is just encoded gobbledygook (DTS, DD) which is either pre-encoded (movies) or encoded on the fly (expensive sound card). The S/PDIF specifications were designed so that it had enough bandwidth to transfer stereo only.

HDMI on the other hand was designed to take multiple channels in PCM, a maximum of 9.1 @ 48KHz, 5.1 @ 96KHz and stereo @ 192KHz without having to convert it to said gobbledygook.
Click to expand...

HDMI can do 8 channel (7.1) at 192kHz in LPCM, though there is no mention of 10 channel LPCM support at all.
 
Auraomega said:
No it really can't, it can only send stereo PCM. Anything else is just encoded gobbledygook (DTS, DD) which is either pre-encoded (movies) or encoded on the fly (expensive sound card). The S/PDIF specifications were designed so that it had enough bandwidth to transfer stereo only.

HDMI on the other hand was designed to take multiple channels in PCM, a maximum of 9.1 @ 48KHz, 5.1 @ 96KHz and stereo @ 192KHz without having to convert it to said gobbledygook.
Click to expand...

Whilst I agree with you technically, your painting quite a dark picture. Almost anything you play on an HTPC with multi channel audio short of Blurays will have compressed audio anyway. Running a DVD with DTS over HDMI will not have any improvement over S/PDIF, the source is already encoded, garbage in garbage out etc. That said HDMI is inherently more capable so you might as well use it anyway.
 
I don't see any mention of a HTPC (I may have just missed it) so it's completely possible that he will be playing games at which point optical is pretty much useless without a high end card. HDMI will be my preferred method of connectivity due to the number of audio channels and video all in a single cable.

@DarkBahamut: you might be right, I was going by memory although I'm almost certain that 9.2 should be possible, especially if 7.1 @ 192 is possible. My AVR doesn't seem to work at anything above what I've mentioned and only supports 7.1 max anyway, quite possibly just the DACs used for the limits of frequency.
 
Does the audio come from the mini HDMI out on the gfx card in this case evga 580 or can i use the 2nd dvi out with a dvi/hdmi adaptor and get sound that way my amp has 4 hdmi inputs

Plan is HDMI all three pc,s and blu ray player and connect optical with ps3
Three gfx cards are 580,470 and 5870
 
Auraomega said:
I don't see any mention of a HTPC (I may have just missed it) so it's completely possible that he will be playing games at which point optical is pretty much useless without a high end card. HDMI will be my preferred method of connectivity due to the number of audio channels and video all in a single cable.

@DarkBahamut: you might be right, I was going by memory although I'm almost certain that 9.2 should be possible, especially if 7.1 @ 192 is possible. My AVR doesn't seem to work at anything above what I've mentioned and only supports 7.1 max anyway, quite possibly just the DACs used for the limits of frequency.
Click to expand...

I will give you that, I was assuming it was for an HTPC, if it isn't then HDMI is head and shoulders above.
 
Auraomega said:
No it really can't, it can only send stereo PCM. Anything else is just encoded gobbledygook (DTS, DD) which is either pre-encoded (movies) or encoded on the fly (expensive sound card). The S/PDIF specifications were designed so that it had enough bandwidth to transfer stereo only.QUOTE]

Wiki : S/PDIF can carry two channels of PCM audio or a multi-channel compressed surround sound format such as Dolby Digital or DTS.
I have a Foxtel box and a DVD player both outputting multichannel DD or DTS over S/PDIF
Click to expand...
 
You've just repeated him? You are sending a multichannel compressed audio stream. SPDIF can only do stereo if you send uncompressed PCM audio data.
 
Ok so we're talking about compressed vs uncompressed ? My mistake then.

The only point I am trying to make is that S/PDIF can send multichannel audio, regardless of the format that it is sent in
 
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