HTPC advice

What I will probably do is get the Asus 4850 card. What will give me better audio quality. If I run an optical cable from the xonar to the amp, or if I just use the graphics cards' built in audio?

Thanks for all the advice
 
xrs said:
What I will probably do is get the Asus 4850 card. What will give me better audio quality. If I run an optical cable from the xonar to the amp, or if I just use the graphics cards' built in audio?

Thanks for all the advice
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If you're watching movies / tv with DD/DTS audio streams, then the Xonar will sound better.

If you're just in to music, then there shouldn't be a difference in audio quality.
 
crinkleshoes said:
The loss in sound quality almost certainly comes from decoding DD/DTS/D-HD/DTS-MA and re-encoding it to LPCM, only to have it decoded again by the amp.
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Sorry but you are way off base, the 48xx's don't process DD/DTS bitstreams it passes them through untouched exactly the same as via SPDIF with a soundcard.

These cards aren't capable of any proper processing, they're more or less a transport device ie they deliver what they're given.

LPCM is only used for non bitstreams, ie 2 channel and HD streams which have been decoded through software and sent via LPCM on the card. Yes native Dolby HD/DTS-MA will sound better bitstreamed through a player to the amp directly than converting through software and send via LPCM but the difference isn't staggering and the process is still very raw and maturing albeit very slowly :)

crinkleshoes said:
If you're watching movies / tv with DD/DTS audio streams, then the Xonar will sound better.

If you're just in to music, then there shouldn't be a difference in audio quality.
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The Xonar will sound the same as the 48xx card for everything minus HD streams which obviously the Xonars can't handle, although depending on the amp the Xonar might sound better through analog for 2 channel music playback.

monkeyspank said:
Will it? Shouldn't it just pass the signal through to the amp for decoding regardless?
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it will pass through untouched ala SPDIF, crinkleshoes is confusing HD decoding through software with DD/DTS streams - they're completely seperate issues.
 
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marscay said:
The Xonar will sound the same as the 48xx card for everything minus HD streams which obviously the Xonars can't handle, although depending on the amp the Xonar might sound better through analog for 2 channel music playback.
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that needs to be cleared up as well lol

it wont sound the same because LPCM is significantly better than lossy DD/DTS, especially when you're comparing it to DD/DTS thats unoptimised an being encoded on the fly. if you are comparing apples to almost apples, and by that i mean 7.1 lpcm vs 7.1 analogue from a xonar, then things get a lot closer.


However, id put money on the LPCM being better in a vast majorty of cases because a) the vast majorty of amps out there will do better with a hdmi input than analogue (im thinking mainstream av amps here - a grand and below) and b) most importantly the majority of amps disable all dsp's on their multi-channel analogue inputs, so no bass/treble adjustment, no speaker distance settings and especially no audyssey correction.
 
james.miller said:
that needs to be cleared up as well lol

it wont sound the same because LPCM is significantly better than lossy DD/DTS, especially when you're comparing it to DD/DTS thats unoptimised an being encoded on the fly. if you are comparing apples to almost apples, and by that i mean 7.1 lpcm vs 7.1 analogue from a xonar, then things get a lot closer.
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obviously but i was referring to streaming the same type of sound which both can handle natively, DD/DTS bitstreams & 2 channel PCM will sound identical on both devices.

clearly LPCM derived from Dolby-HD etc should sound superior to any DD/DTS that the Xonar sound card can deliver as it can't handle the LPCM....it's obvious enough that i didn't feel the need to clarify + the question was about TV and DD/DTS audio so my answer was directed toward that. :);)
 
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yes but you said everything minus Hd streams - what about general windows audio (including tv shows and whatnot that arent DD/DTS encoded) and gaming?
 
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well my advice would be to run 2 channel from TV shows through ffdshow and encode to DD to enable the various DSP's on the receiver instead of native LPCM 2 channel, like you said a lot of amps can't process with their DSP's on LPCM. you could also use the Xonar and encode to DDLive but i do it through ffdshow and it works well for me......the 805 sounds pretty good through Neural 5.1 this way.

as far as gaming Xonar is king, but i was just answering to his question of DD/DTS primarily ......don't have the energy to cover all the bases all of the time ;)
 
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marscay said:
like you said a lot of amps can't process with their DSP's on LPCM. you could also use the Xonar and encode to DDLive but i do it through ffdshow and it works well for me......the 805 sounds pretty good through Neural 5.1 this way
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i didnt say that lol, i said most amps cant enable dsp's when using the multi channel analogue input, they can with LPCM - your own 805 behaves this way!

so no, id take LPCM over encoded dd/dts every time, which is why i chose to sell my xonar and use my 4830's hdmi output :)
 
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Thanks for all the input. When I get the amp, I will test what sounds better. Off to test some tannoy T500's tomorrow!
 
Went for for the B&W 685 theatre system in the end. Have to wait for about a month though as they're having problems getting in supply :(
 
james.miller said:
so no, id take LPCM over encoded dd/dts every time, which is why i chose to sell my xonar and use my 4830's hdmi output :)
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ninja edit - AFAIK the 805 can't apply PLII/Neural 5.1 to any 2 channel input via HDMI which is why i use ffdshow to encode first - after this the 805 can apply a 5.1 DSP to the stream which sounds immensely better...i only do this for tv shows which are 2 channel mp3 everthing else is sent via AC3Filter/SPDIF over HDMI.

but i'd love to know if the 805 can apply ProLogic II/Neural 5.1 to a 2 channel stream over HDMI because the only DSP's it can apply are still in 2 channel and basically sound the same, this is how it works for me and from what i've gathered on various forums i am not alone - but if you know how to do it please share :)

i don't use a xonar anymore either, surplus to requirements.
 
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marscay said:
but i'd love to know if the 805 can apply ProLogic II/Neural 5.1 to a 2 channel stream over HDMI because the only DSP's it can apply are still in 2 channel and basically sound the same, this is how it works for me and from what i've gathered on various forums i am not alone - but if you know how to do it please share :)
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well there you go according to the manual it can only apply 5.1 to 2 channel/multi LPCM @ 32-96khz haha and nothing decent is ever encoded that low.

have you tried encoding to DD for 2 channel sources like tv shows etc and applying the Neural 5.1 to that instead of the basic PCM in stereo???? it sounds way better to me but then i have an extremely nice centre channel so it may not work out better for everyone i guess.
 
marscay said:
well there you go according to the manual it can only apply 5.1 to 2 channel/multi LPCM @ 32-96khz haha and nothing decent is ever encoded that low.
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that is correct, 96khz. nothing decent is enocded that low? whats encoded higher than that then?


i know for a fact that you use audyssey, but you've never complained that that doesnt work above 96khz on the 805, have you?
 
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seems sarcasm is lost on you then ;)

all my homemade dvd rips are 48Khz as are a lot/most of media files so it should be able to perform a Neural 5.1 matrix on these files but it doesn't, do you have the same problem?
 
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