what sound card?

[Colby]

This might be more of htpc forum question but, I am in the market for a soundcard for my xlobby box. It connects to my reciever, and I am adding a dvd drive to it to play dvds, from the box instead of my stand alone jvc player. I need an adequate soundcard (nothing like this) to output my dvds as 5.1 via optical.

My ideal card would be 1 mic in, 1 phones out, 5.1 optical out, less than $50.

Any ideas?

[alaricljs]

Hey Colby....

Chaintech 710... av710? something like that. $35 or so?

You can check out avsforum.com and there's an Envy 24 "definitive thread" in the HTPC area that basically says that for what you want, that's the card to get.

Enjoy

[art]

check them out:
http://www.turtlebeach.com/site/
good price (not on their website) good quality

[QTips]

I'm very happy with Soundblaster audigy2 ZS
good sound,great compability,low CPU usage and THX optimizer for correct 5.1 adjustment.

I tried audigy2 NX (external USB) but that was noticeable lower quality than ZS

[erikt]

There are tons of threads on htpcnews regarding this decision. Pretty
much consensus is that an Envy24 based card is what you need.
To get the best sound, you want to use Kernel Streaming or ASIO to
your sound card, then then SPDIF out to your receiver.

Winamp supports ASIO via a plugin, Foobar supports Kernel streaming
natively and ASIO via a plugin.

Envy24 based cards that I've heard about are the Chaintech AV-710
and the Prodigy 7.1. I use the AV-710 and it's working beautifully.

The Audigy cards are great for gaming, but the general consensus
is that they suck for music/soundtracks.

Have a look at the following link for the details:
http://htpcnews.com/forums/index.php?showtopic=3616

erikt

[Colby]

thanks everyone, when looking at these cards I notice a thing called audio resolution, ie. 24bit @ 192kbs

what is good and bad resoultion and does my reciever have resolution to match?

[erikt]

Audio resolution only matters when you're using your sound card
to do the D/A translation. If you're sending a digital bit stream over
an SPDIF interface to your receiver, this parameter doesn't matter.
That's why you can get superior sound using a cheap sound card.
A decent receiver will have better DACs and a quieter power supply,
so it makes sense to let your receiver so the conversion.

[sdumas]

I have to agree with Erikt.

If you are planning to use an optical, or, coaxial digital output, you shouldn't care less about the D/A portion of the card. The decoding will be performed by your receiver/decoder/wathever you have outside the PC, not by the PC itself.

I know some people will not agree with me, but, your source is digital (CD/DVD), your pathway is digital (PC Bus, Sound card) and the output is digital (SPDIF Optical/Coaxial), in theory, there should be no modifications to the signal until it is decoded by your receiver. The 1's and 0's will still be 1's and 0's when they get to your receiver in the same sequence, again in theory, unaltered.

So the cheapest sound card that has a SPDIF output will do the trick. No need for any additional gadgets of any kind.

If you are planning to output and decode FROM the PC, then it's a different story.

Hope this helps.

[erikt]

I know some people will not agree with me, but, your source is digital (CD/DVD), your pathway is digital (PC Bus, Sound card) and the output is digital (SPDIF Optical/Coaxial), in theory, there should be no modifications to the signal until it is decoded by your receiver. The 1's and 0's will still be 1's and 0's when they get to your receiver in the same sequence, again in theory, unaltered.

The caveat to this is that, unless you're using ASIO or Kernel Streaming,
there will be modifications to the signal. CD audio is 44.1 kHz, but
Windows' Kmixer insists on up-sampling to 48kHz. You avoid this by
using ASIO or Kernel Streaming. That's why an Envy24 based sound
card is good, Kernel Streaming is supported by the drivers.

A good experiment is to grab a DTS-encoded .WAV file (I found some
Christina Aguilera tracks DTS re-mixed somewhere), and try to play it. It
will only play properly if the data stream is reaching your receiver
un-modified.

[Colby]

I recieved my chaintech 7.1 soundcard and just installed it. So far so good, I am perplexed by hardware jumpers so I left them alone and installed it as is. So far so good. I had troubles with the drivers but I downloaded envy24 drivers from http://www.viaarena.com/ and it worked better. I should have all 7.1 up soon and be able to really tell how this is. Thanks everyone for the smarts.

[edgley]

7.1?
Thats a lot of speakers!