soundcard vs receiver or preamp

johhnn · 16 Feb 2021 at 04:51

Hi Thanks for reading

What do you think of a decent level soundcard versus decent receiver.
The soundblaster ae5 connected to external power amps, versus yamaha rxa2070
I know this is a stupid question and there is some old debate, would love a modern 2021 point of view.
Do you have any real world experience of cards versus receivers, or cards versus external processors of any nature.
Many thanks.

johhnn · 17 Feb 2021 at 08:51

Think i may try the dac route. Do you have any good recommendations for external dac / preamps for a 5.1 system.
Preferably hdmi out from pc, to hdmi input on dac/ preamp, then rca outs on dac for connection to power amps.
I have a budget of £300, or am willing to buy used.

johhnn · 18 Feb 2021 at 08:26

I have the asus H170I-PRO motherboard, paid £159 high end board, lets me put out 5.1 through the hdmi. Am thinking of a preamp or dac from hdmi.
The speakers i have are kef ls50 meta, paid £999 per pair.
What do you mean quality will be compromised by the board?
Any dac recommendations? Willing to buy used if any bargains to be had
Many thanks

johhnn · 19 Feb 2021 at 05:48

The reason i want to get away from sound cards and onto external dac is that i am having problems with the pc audio. I've searched around for months but cannot find anybody with a similar problem.
When i play a stereo file of low bitrate on the pc, about 140 kb/s the sound quality is okay, i can enjoy the music.
When i play a file with hd audio dtshdma or dolbytru the sound quality goes down considerably and sounds terrible compared to the stereo file.
With hd files the bass goes down by about 10db until i can barely hear it, the mids and high sound all wrong a piano does not sound like a piano the sound is thin and boring.
Intresting because the higher bitrate hd files should sound considerably better but i am getting the reverse effect.
I borrowed an asus stxII top end sound card and it was doing exactly the same thing. Have been fiddiling around with the settings but no change.
The only thing that comes close to an explanation is an article i found on protected audio pathways:
" Regarding soundcards in PC,s , the high res content from DTS MA and Dolby tru HD is always downconverted to 16 bit before digital to analog conversion.
There are no exceptions to this. It is a condition of the PAP ( protected audio path ) within PC's. "

" Without PAP, all audio must be downsampled (a.k.a. “bit crippled”) to 16-bit, 48kHz per the AACS specification. Unfortunately, there is no Protected Audio Path (PAP) on any computer right now, so all HD Audio is currently downsampled on a PC. "

Even taking this into account the hd files should sound better than the stereo but the hd sound is thin, washed out, boring.
I am doing something fundamentally wrong at a very basic level but cannot figure out what it is.
At the moment I have the asus H170I-PRO motherboard running windows 10 pro 64-bit, then asus stxII into the pci slot, then rca outs from stxII into 3 quad power amps to give 5.1 sound. Volume control is on the stxII.
Can you help, or do you have any pointers in the right direction.
Thanks

johhnn · 20 Feb 2021 at 08:52

Thanks for the replies much appreciated.

The chord mojo is good but i need multichannel 5.1 or 7.1. I would love more some recommendations for multichannel dacs or preamps, budget is £300 but am also willing to look at second hand.

Also I am going to try different media players for windows 10, the powerdvd i am currently using is highly recommeneded. Today i am going to format the hard drive and do a clean install of windows, also install latest drivers and updates for everything. Then see if there is any improvement. If not i might ditch the pc and move to a streamer. My amateurish guesswork is that a pc has to run a huge operating system, leading to possible driver clashes or conflicting hardware. Whereas a streamer does not try to be a jack of all trades and probably has a smaller, less resource stressing linux opertaing system installed and may perform better as it only has one job to do. Possibly leading to better audio video performance. Is this a valid point.