looking for a soundcard with dig. coax output

psychodil · 31 Jul 2012 at 11:25

Hi, I'm looking for a decentish soundcard with digital coaxial output. I have a Denton DTS amp and good 5.1 speakers, but both digital optical inputs are taken by my blue ray player and my TV. The third optical socket has a broken catch so can't use that.

I have a digital coaxial input left so was hoping to connect a soundcard to that, hopefully without a convertor. At the moment I am just using the onboard realtek audio with phono leads, but want an upgrade for gaming and playing music/films.

Thanks for any suggestions.

Marsman · 31 Jul 2012 at 11:45

Xonar D2/X has optical/coaxial connection. That's the cheapest card with coaxial, AFAIK.

james.miller · 31 Jul 2012 at 12:03

He's right ^^^

You dont tend to see the cheaper cards any more, at least nothing that was released in the last few years. Shame really, as the ~£90 quid that the d2/d2x commands is a bit of a joke if you just want a coax spdif output. Ninety quid... You can buy a top-flight AMD 990fx motherboard for that, with coax spdif thrown in. It's about time a decent card was released that ditched analogue output in favour of an all-digital design for a decent price. (ie, not £90 quid).

psychodil · 31 Jul 2012 at 13:06

£90 is a bit steep, mind you I havent had a dedicated sound card for a few years.
Whats peoples opinions on convertors? I could get a cheaper soundcard with digital optical output and get a convertor for about £10.

whitecrook · 31 Jul 2012 at 13:09

Marsman · 31 Jul 2012 at 13:30

One thing to take into consideration is, you will need Dolby Digital Live and/or DTS Connect in order to pass 5.1 via SPDIF. Majority of games don't use DD/DTS (unlike DVD's which do), so you will need to encode the audio with DD or DTS in real time.

If you were to take optical from your motherboard and use a coaxial converter, then it would work from a connection point of view. If your motherboard does not have DDL/DTSC though, then you will only get stereo when playing games.

Xonar DS/X is the cheapest card with DTSC. D1/X is the cheapest with DDL. D2/X has both.

Does your receiver have HDMI connections? If it does, you could use that from your graphics card, assuming it can pass audio via HDMI, and also the receiver accept audio via HDMI. Some older ones can't.

psychodil · 31 Jul 2012 at 13:33

Marsman said:
One thing to take into consideration is, you will need Dolby Digital Live and/or DTS Connect in order to pass 5.1 via SPDIF. Majority of games don't use DD/DTS (unlike DVD's which do), so you will need to encode the audio with DD or DTS in real time.

If you were to take optical from your motherboard and use a coaxial converter, then it would work from a connection point of view. If your motherboard does not have DDL/DTSC though, then you will only get stereo when playing games.

Xonar DS/X is the cheapest card with DTSC. D1/X is the cheapest with DDL. D2/X has both.

Does your receiver have HDMI connections? If it does, you could use that from your graphics card, assuming it can pass audio via HDMI, and also the receiver accept audio via HDMI. Some older ones can't.

Hi, thanks for reply. No, my receiver doesnt have HDMI input

Just got phono analog connections, digital coax and a broken digital optical port left.

Motherboard is P67 sabretooth so dont think it has dolby digital live output but will check.