HTPC advice

xrs

xrs

xrs

Associate
Joined
16 Aug 2007
Posts
302
Hi,
I have a few spare parts lying around, so I decided to make a HTPC as part of my summer project. The specs will be as follows:
Q6600 @ 3Ghz
Asus Rampage Formula Mobo
2GB Crucial BallistiX
1TB Samsung Spinpoint F1
BFG 8800GTS 640mb Factory Oc’d
Asus Xonar D2 7.1
Pioneer Blue-ray disk drive
Antec Fusion Max HTPC case

I am a little confused about how to connect video and sound to an AV receiver. I was under the impression that HDMI uses a single cable to carry video and audio. However, I want to be able to utilise my Xonar for better sound quality. Will I be able to connect an HDMI cable and audio cables (optical or whatever) to my AV receiver, or will I have to run the HDMI cable to the tv for picture, and hook up my sound card to the AV receiver to get the audio? (the latter option is a bit inconvenient). I hope this all makes sense.
Thank you very much for any help!
 
That really depends on your AV receiver.

I have a similar htpc setup with an 8800GT and a Xonar D2.

The 8800GT doesn't do audio over HDMI - just picture (which is fine for me)... so I doubt your 8800GTS would do it anyway.

What I do is output video via HDMI and audio via optical from the D2... works brilliantly :)
 
I was thinking about getting the Yamaha Dsp-ax863se amp and pairing it with some Tannoy Arena TS500 speakers. Is this a good set up?
 
That Yamaha is a good amp and those Tannoys seem pretty well rated if you like eggs.

But why not go for some bookshelfs if you're compromised for space?
 
I am not compromised on space. I was looking at the Mordaunt Short Alumni, but the TS500 seemed better. What bookshelf speakers would you suggest?
 
You don't have to use the sound from HDMI, just set the sound output to be the xonar in windows control panel if thats what you want.
 
if your amp will take a HDMI connection that will be better quality then spdif from the xonar. but yes you can use the xonar instead.
 
By sending your sound over HDMI OR SPDIF it doesnt matter if its zonar or your G crad as your amp will do all the work.

Can your amp do HD audio? If it does, use HDMI.
 
But his PC doesn't do HD sound so that would be pointless.

If you're going to be using SPDIF, that would be identical to HDMI since both just pass the signal on for the amp to process.

If you want to use your Xonars processing, then you have to use analogue connectors (3.5mm from sound card to phono on amp)

So unless you're playing games where PC sound processing is useful, I'd just take out the xonar and use the onboard digital sound.
 
xrs said:
I am not compromised on space. I was looking at the Mordaunt Short Alumni, but the TS500 seemed better. What bookshelf speakers would you suggest?
Click to expand...

well as always that depends on your budget, are you going to be playing music with this system? ....if you are then eggs will be a dissapointment.

i can understand when peeps have space limits and/or budgets but you compromise quite a lot really, there's only so much sound you can squeeze out of a little driver.


neil_g said:
if your amp will take a HDMI connection that will be better quality then spdif from the xonar. but yes you can use the xonar instead.
Click to expand...

what'chu talking bout willis.
 
neil_g said:
trueHD vs dolby digital?
Click to expand...

onboard sound vs £155 hdmi sound card. worth it? not unless youve spent a grand plus on an avp and speakers. at the very least.

LPCM though, thats a different story. a £30 ati graphics card will do that. 7.1 192khz lpcm at that.

If you're going to be using SPDIF, that would be identical to HDMI since both just pass the signal on for the amp to process.
Click to expand...

no it wouldnt. to pass DD/DTS the soundcard has to be recieving said audio stream. to pass hd audio again, said steam needs to be recieved AND be able to passed thru by the audio device. if you are encoding DD/DTS with the sound device (for example, 5.1 from a game) then you are not passing it. Secondly, not all audio is <48khz/24bit and for audio that is, LPCM or TrueHD/DTS:MA would show the advantage.
 
Last edited:
neil_g said:
if your amp will take a HDMI connection that will be better quality then spdif from the xonar. but yes you can use the xonar instead.
Click to expand...

Always good when people don't have the foggiest idea what they're talking about :-)

As mentioned before... even if there was a possibility hdmi sound from that system could be any good... the 8800GTS doesn't do sound over HDMI.

neil_g said:
trueHD vs dolby digital?
Click to expand...

Another thing you're missing... as far as I'm aware, there's only two consumer audio devices for PCs which can output truehd/dts-ma & that's the highest end Asus (HDAV1.3) [& the Auzentech] which costs about 200 quid and is an hdmi pass-through thing (hdmi from vid card -> sound card, sound card adds audio, outputs hdmi with video and sound).
 
the good news is £70 would buy a gpu thats more economical on power, faster, and supports 7.1 lpcm. so that would be my recommendation IF the op intends to buy any hardware.


anyway bottom line: with the hardware listed in the op, its going to be dvi>hdmi lead for the video and spdif for the audio if he wants it all hooked up to the ampo but be careful....that card doesnt support HDCP correctly and you could be left stuck with no video over hdmi.
 
sswats said:
If you're going to be using SPDIF, that would be identical to HDMI since both just pass the signal on for the amp to process.

If you want to use your Xonars processing, then you have to use analogue connectors (3.5mm from sound card to phono on amp)
Click to expand...

SPDIF and HDMI would not be identical.

SPDIF would output the original audio signal & allow the amp to decode (better option).

Of the graphics cards which output audio, you can either get the older ATi thing which outputs horrific 5.1 audio (avc codec or something silly) or the newer ati chipset which outputs LCPM.

LCPM means the signal has been decoded on the card and is then output to be played (not processed) by the amplifier. This gives SIGNIFICANTLY worse sound quality (as compared by myself both through my HTPC and standalone blu-ray player). You get much better sound quality if the amp does the work (well, depending on the amp of course, but the yamaha suggested isn't too much of a slouch :))
 
crinkleshoes said:
LCPM means the signal has been decoded on the card and is then output to be played (not processed) by the amplifier. This gives SIGNIFICANTLY worse sound quality (as compared by myself both through my HTPC and standalone blu-ray player). You get much better sound quality if the amp does the work (well, depending on the amp of course, but the yamaha suggested isn't too much of a slouch :))
Click to expand...

i'd strongly disagree with that, ive nothing bad to say about the LPCM output on my 4830.

small note, its encoded on the card, not decoded unless you are feeding it DD/DTS (in which case it is re-encoded again). how good those results are i couldnt say - i do the decoding in software before passing to the card.
 
Last edited:
james.miller said:
i'd strongly disagree with that, ive nothing bad to say about the LPCM output on my 4830.

small note, its encoded on the card, not decoded unless you are feeding it DD/DTS (in which case it is re-encoded again). how good those results are i couldnt say - i do the decoding in software before passing to the card.
Click to expand...

I'm not saying LPCM is particularly bad, but comparatively to letting the amp do all the work, it makes a big difference to my ears.

I was assuming the card would be fed DD/DTS feeds practically all the time as it's an HTPC he's building. I know all my movies / tv shows have those streams embedded.

Playing MP3s or so though, I doubt there would be any difference in sound quality.

And yes - you're right... LPCM is effectively a different codec, along the lines of DTS/DD, but with the capability of higher bit rates than those two.

I over-simplified a bit in my previous post.

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.

From my blu-ray player, the most noticeable difference between an LCPM DTS-MA soundtrack and a direct DTS-MA feed was the bass response. Hard to put in to words, but the difference was staggering.

From the Radeon 4XXX I have, there just seemed to be a drop in clarity/warmth to the sound... the warmth was probably part of the processing on the xonar, but the clarity had to be something to do with the decode/recode/decode process.

Hence why I stay clear of LPCM :-)

FYI, my kit:

Denon 2808CI
Kef iQ7 fronts
Kef Q9C centre
Kef iQ1 rears
 
Last edited:
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top Bottom