HTPC sound Card advice - will it make a difference?

[mikee37]

Hi

Looking to put the finishing touches to my HTPC rig and am considering getting a X-Meridian sound card, however......

In the main I will use my HTPC for movies and would suspect that on board sound via the Gigabyte GA-G33M-DS2R via S/PDIF through to my Pioneer V1016 amp would suffice.

But I also want great sound playing the high-end games that my system is capable of running and therefore need some advice on how to achieve this.

Am I right in assuming that without a separate sound card I would only get stereo on games via S/PDIF through to my amp?

And if I did get the soundcard would the added sound features of this card be wasted if my amp did the processing or is there merit in letting the card do the work as it sounds awesome and then let the amp just amplify the sound.

Any advice very welcome.

Thanks

 

[mikee37]

bump anybody??

 

[james.miller]

if you are intending to use spdid then no soundcard should make a difference at all for movies.



for gaming, yes you'd only get 2 channel unless you use an ecoding card such as the x-meridian, x-mystique or any of the other ddlive/dts encoding cards.

recommending a card atm is quite difficult. if you want a card that's good for older games that is eax5 or whatever they went up to then you'll want an x-fi using analogue connections to your amplifier.

if you want a decent card that'll perform well with newer games that are more likely to stick to openAL as microsoft dropped support for directsound in vista and with that EAX also, then id say get the card with the best analogue outputs you can find. the asus xonar looks to be very good indeed.

there is a lot to be said for cards that can encode multi channel audio into DD and DTS, but im no longer a fan of them. having used 3 different cards (soundstorm on my old nforce 2 board, x-mystique and the realtek onboard on my asus p5w dh deluxe) they all suffer from the same basic drawbacks. they all add a delay to the audio which over time became more and more aggravating.

whatever way you choose to go (x-fi for compatibility with older stuff or an upmarket card like the xonar for openAL compatibility and amazing audio outputs) i will say analogue is ALWAYS the way to go for gaming.


as far as the chocie between letting the card to the encoding and letting the amp do it, thats a tricky one. it really depends on the dac's in the card and amp in question. if its a budget amp (my old yamaha rxv630 for example) them almost certainly the card may be better. if its a mid-top end amp(my onkyo tx-sr805 with its burr brown dacs), the card would be hard pushed to match it, let alone be better.

 

[Xon]

Let me just add that even with spdif the X-Fi's crystalizer still works and I must say I do like it and use it for watching movies.

 

[james.miller]

its an interesting one that. the crystalizer does the exact opposite of what thx surround processing with its re-eq function does. re-eq tones down the top end to make it more appropriate for home viewing in a nutshell. crystalizer makes the top end a lot brighter.