Asus Xonar D2

[Gigi]

I've been looking for a sound card that will connect to my Home Theatre for a wee while now and ive been browsing through the forums and unfortunately my knowledge of cables and connections is very very limited.

At the moment i have my on-board sound connected to my Theatre via phono cable. It does the trick but im looking for better audio quality.

Now, I was looking at the Asus Xonar D2 and was wondering how i would go about connecting that to my Home Theatre. Whats the best connection? Optical, Coaxial, Phono ?

What connections does the Asus card take?

Thanks a million for your help

 

[psalliss]

hi mate i got one this week for the same use as you. its a really nice card with good software, ive connected mine via co-oaxial and the sound is superb.

the card has coaxial with an optical conversion thingy. and i think 7.1 anologue connections.

can definatly recommend it. i havent given it a full testing yet but have tried a few dvd clips and music and was impressed.

 

[Gigi]

Excellent, nice one.

So where abouts would be good to buy a coaxial cable? the coax im thinking of is for tv's, but im sure your talking about a different cable

 

[james.miller]

anybody using spdif on the xonar and telling you its 'better' is off their rocker. spdif = spdif, its exactly the same quality whether you're using onboard sound or a £90 soundcard. you dont buy these cards for spdif, you buy them for their analogue outputs

one interesting thing to note is the eax5.0 compatibility thats just been added. that, along with its DDLive and DTS:interactive output, almost puts it on a level pegging with the x-fi prelude in that people can finally have up to date surround effects and output the audio over spdif. which is very handy for people who dont have the pc right next to an amplifier.

the best connections will depend on what your connecting it to. what is your amplifier? does it have 7.1 analogue inputs? how far away from the pc is it?

 

[Gigi]

Connecting to a Panasonic Sc-ht855

Has these inputs;

Input/ Output
• 1 HDMI Terminal
• 1 Digital Input (Optical)
• 1 Scart Terminal
• 1 Component Video Out
• USB Terminal for MP3, WMA, JPEG and MPEG4 Playback
* Products for the U.K. are not equipped with MPEG4 playback function.
• Front Music Port for Portable Audio Player (M3)
• 1 Audio Input for AUX

Currently i have the phono cable go into the AUX connection from my onboard sound.

The amp is probably 5meters from the computer (cable has to go round back of desk, along wall, back of tv) so its not a straight line!