soundcard with coaxial output

psalliss · 29 Feb 2008 at 09:03

as above looking for a soundcard with a coaxial output, so that i can connect direct to my av reciever for full 5.1 surround sound. suggestions please.\

james.miller · 29 Feb 2008 at 09:27

there's loads of them. how much do you want to spend, and is this 5.1 needed for gaming or just windows and movies?

craptakular · 29 Feb 2008 at 09:55

im interested in this too, im also after a cheap coaxial output for SPDIF passthrough to a reciever.

Just for movies - DD5.1 and DTS

psalliss · 29 Feb 2008 at 16:28

cheers its just for movies looking for a good quality one. im basically looking to replace my dvd player all together and use my pc/

Cairnsey · 29 Feb 2008 at 16:54

Won't any sound card with SP/DIF work?

InvaderGIR · 29 Feb 2008 at 17:34

Cairnsey said:
Won't any sound card with SP/DIF work?

From what I've heard Creative's cards with SPDIF actually only give 2.1 analogue and not 5.1 digial out, which sound strange to me really.

If someone can clear that up I'd appreciate it.

As for the card, loads of them have SPDIF out and don't cost all that much.

InvG

psalliss · 29 Feb 2008 at 17:44

can anyone link to a few cards that have a coaxial out, dont want the optical out as have no spare inputes on my reciever so has to coaxial and able to support hd audio/

james.miller · 29 Feb 2008 at 19:23

any card with an spdif out, be it optical or coax, will do 5.1 for movies. for movies its just a case of tacking the soundtrack on the dvd and pushing it straight out the spdif socket for an amp to decode.

its gaming where things change. if you want 5.1 in gaming through the spdif port, you'll need a card that can encode DDLive or DTSinteractive. cards that can do it include the x-mystique, x-meridian, montego DDL, the x-fi prelude and the asus xonar D2

can anyone link to a few cards that have a coaxial out, dont want the optical out as have no spare inputes on my reciever so has to coaxial and able to support hd audio/

HD audio is not possible via spdif. you MUST use analogue or hdmi and at this current time, there are no pc components that can output multi channel HD audio over hdmi.

psalliss · 29 Feb 2008 at 19:40

james.miller said:
any card with an spdif out, be it optical or coax, will do 5.1 for movies. for movies its just a case of tacking the soundtrack on the dvd and pushing it straight out the spdif socket for an amp to decide.

cheers mate. could you expand on the above. dont fully understand what you mean about tacking the soundtrack on the dvd and pushing it straight out the spdif socket.

which cards have a coaxial output from the card

thank you

psalliss · 3 Mar 2008 at 12:48

looking at one of these. has anyone had any experience and have been reading reviews trying to find if any support true hd. its going to be used on a vista 64bit and connected via coaxial to my onkyo sr705 reciver.

Asus Xonar D2X Ultra Fidelity 7.1 PCI-E

Auzen X-Fi Prelude 7.1

cheers

psalliss · 3 Mar 2008 at 18:56

went for the asus in the end, as it seems to have better support and comes with power dvd.

james.miller · 3 Mar 2008 at 21:08

psalliss said:
cheers mate. could you expand on the above. dont fully understand what you mean about tacking the soundtrack on the dvd and pushing it straight out the spdif socket.

which cards have a coaxial output from the card

thank you

thats weird. sorry, i did answer this but i dont know where my post went :confused:

basically for dvd's the soundcard doesnt have to do any processing, it just takes the audio track from the dvd and passes it straight through, out the spdif socket and on to an amp for decoding

trueHD, well. not when using spdif, no. spdif doesnt support trueHD or dts master audio. it's analogue outputs are easily good enough though. any hd/dvd software will be able to decode the soundtracks and use the soundcards analogue outputs

a word of warning though, powerdvd still, at this point in time, has the nifty feature of swapping the center and rear left channels, so all the dialogue comes out of the rear left speaker. this only happens with hd audio for some reason, i dont know why.

psalliss · 4 Mar 2008 at 09:32

cheers james. that makes sense now. wouldnt effect me then as all dvds will be ripped to the hard drive and will be played from there so spdif not required. why cant a coaxial cable support true hd?

oops just realised that ive ordered the pci one and not the pci-e one. will it really make any differene. too late to change it as it will be here soon.

james.miller · 4 Mar 2008 at 09:45

bandwidth basically, spdif doesnt support it. that and spdi has no way of encrypting the audio which is something HD audio requires

no wont make any difference, other than which slot you put it in lol