Audigy 2 ZS, MegaWorks THX 2.1 250D, cables, worth upgrading?

Konstantin · 7 Mar 2011 at 13:27

Hi, second post here, hopefully many more to come.

I have had Creative Audigy 2 ZS since 2004, through XP, Vista and now Windows 7. Never had an issue, with drivers or the sound. Pretty much the same story with the speakers, which are high spec (at least at the time) Creative Labs MegaWorks THX 2.1 250D. Music and films are my main uses of the system, followed by gaming, for which I haven't got much free time anymore.

After reading reviews and opinions on the new sound cards, there are still a few questions on my mind:

1. Since the DAC and Amp are in the speakers, and I only use the digital S/PDIF output from the sound card, won't all sound cards be the same?
2. Would changing the output from the sound card to analogue (essentially moving the DAC function to the sound card) and using analogue input in the speakers improve the sound quality?
3. Speaker wise, has anyone had experience with 250Ds? And how does the current high end market compare? I'm looking into quality bookshelf speakers + amp set up as an alternative.
4. After recently trying out impressive FLAC music files, would buying quality, shielded, RCA / Coaxial cables make a further improvement to the sound quality?

Looking forward to your feedback.

Andrew Moore · 7 Mar 2011 at 13:41

1, The signal the sound card can deliver will be different so the music may feel warmer and have certain elements exposed that you have not heard before.. other than that the pre-amp will deal with most of the audio production.

2, In theory the sound will not really improve because of the age of the card and the fact again its your amp thats producing the sound however I would have thought the Dac would produce a better sound.

3, cant comment.

4, Good cable should never be over looked and you would be surprised by the amount of difference a good set of cables could make.

Konstantin · 8 Mar 2011 at 14:09

Based on your answer I have come up with 2 options:

Stick with current speakers. Upgrade my sound card to Xonar series, possibly DS, since I will not be using headphones and D2 seems like an overkill for 2.1 set up. Use the soundcards DAC and just let the speaker's inbuilt amp do the rest. Buy quality minijack & speaker cables.

Second, but much more expensive option is to go for Xonar Essence ST, an amp and a pair of Hi-Fi speakers. Quality RCA/Phono & speaker cables.

From quick calculations the second option is likely to cost a lot, which I simply can not afford at the moment.

Which sound card do you think will suit best for the first option? And do you think allowing one of the Xonar cards to convert the signal would justify the possibly noise along the way to the speakers, which will be amplified by them?

brendan · 8 Mar 2011 at 15:48

spdif is often called passthrough, this is because it doesn't touch the sound stream... your computer decodes the compressed audio (although it could be raw PCMs) and sends it as raw PCM to the DAC. Soundcard won't change that sorry.

Some will try pretend HDMI cables will change the picture/sound quality... haven't found anyone yet in the AV industry that agrees with that. (I work in audio/video codecs).

Cables on digital connections like HDMI/optical cables either work or don't. don't bother with anything expensive. Analog cables may, although i wouldnt go spending big bucks on it, most audio blind tests have shown most 'pros' can't tell the difference.

Focus on DAC for sound improvements, speakers and amplfier.

Personally I have a texas PCM2702 DAC with a NAD C320 modified amp + cambridge Audio S30 (speakers are the weak point but i don't have that much space).