Best audio out for HTPC?
I always thought that the optical was the best audio transmission to go from a HTPC to a receiver. I’ve been told recently that you get better sound quality from having 5.1 analog out to the receiver. My computer and receiver support both so I was wondering which one is better? I did some research online and haven’t gotten a straight answer, can anyone help?
i use the analog headphones jack, then again, i dont care much for sound quality.
I use optical also but I do believe 5.1 discreet analog output would sound better… analog usually sounds better than digital… digital suffers from compression
Since the source is a PC, most likely all his media is digital.
If you have a decent receiver, then it probably has a better DAC than your soundcard does, so it’s better to pass the bits straight to the receiver.
depends on the receiver and the soundcard you are using. If you are using onboard sound, without a doubt use optical. If you are using a Prelude, the DAC and opamps are very good. Unless you are using a mid to high end receiver, chances are they Prelude’s will be better.
i’d say optical…although it only outputs stereo to my reciever for some reason, i want 5.1!
SPDIF/TOSLINK only carries two channels of audio unless it is compressed. So unless the source is outputting either AC3 or DTS, it will only be 2 channel. Although a lot of newer motherboards and soundcards can encode both AC3 and DTS.
I have an okay sound card and an older receiver (3-4 years old). The optical I’m currently using is coming off the motherboard although the soundcard came with the mobo. It is an Asus p5n32 board and I’ve heard they have fairly decent sound cards. It seems like the analog would be the better choice because it would send the multiple channels all the time while the optical seems to pick and choose when to send the 5.1 signal.
Compression only matters if the data quality is degraded. Case in point: ZIP file are compressed, but they don’t lose bits in the process.
that’s the lossy vs lossless debate.
In the end, it depends on way too many factors to really discuss here. And budget and amps/speakers are going to influence the answer, greatly.
So… stick with optical? Or are some saying switch to multi-channel analog?
you never told use what you are using for equipment, so we really can’t say.
10:1 he is using MP3 format audio files… which is, to say the least, lossy
That’s not the compression we were talking about. We were talking about the compression of decoded audio data sent over the S/PDIF or TOSLink cable. If the compression used to send 5.1 over those cables is lossless, then it doesn’t matter if it’s compressed.
You don’t decode or recompress data and then send it via s/pdif. You send AC-3 or DTS encoded data via s/pdif to a decoder on the other end.
Sorry, I used the wrong terminology, but what I was getting at is, as long as AC-3 or DTS doesn’t degrade the quality of the audio signal, then it doesn’t matter if the data had to be compressed to feed 6 channels of audio through a cable with only enough bandwidth for 2 channels.
I’m using a pioneer receiver out to a full tower 5.1 setup with self powered woofer. Currently running over optical in what I thought would pull the 5.1 channel audio out of my matroska high def files. Thus far it seems that my receiver is simply "faking" the surround sound because there are some signals being sent to the rear that should definitely have stayed up front. This is why I was wondering if the multichannel analog would have better channel differentiation and quality. As for music, yea I play MP3’s but I honestly don’t care how well they sound because they are recorded in stereo so my receiver fakes the surround anyway. Do you need anything else for specs or what not?
Soundcard
How many soundcards have HDMI out?
Dunno, I’d do it from the video card not the sound card. The ATI’s for example pump audio down the HDMI port of the newer video cards, the built onboard new intel boards with HDMI pump audio down it too, not sure about NVidia.
HDMI will be exactly the same as optical in terms of quality.
The one that comes with the Asus p5n32 motherboard. It has the multiple channel analog outs. My optical is coming off the actual motherboard but it came with the card because the motherboard didn’t have the analogs onboard.
you are using onboard so no. optical is the better choice here.
Now if only I can get my sound settings to allow me to use both optical and analog simultaneously I will be golden. Optical to the receiver and analog to the computer speakers in the other room.
optical still suffers from all the noise introduced from onboard cards. Realistically, an onboard optical still sucks. Much better to get a discrete card.
I disagree. If there were enough interference to affect things in the digital domain, I’d think more than just the soundcard would suffer. The noise you hear is probably being introduced in the analog output stage.
Years ago I had a Gateway 650XL. Overall, a great performance notebook. It had analog and optical output. When playing mp3’s and then hammering the hard drive you’d hear high-speed "ticks" through the output regardless of which output was used.
It shouldn’t. optical is bit-perfect, no matter what is outputting it.
bit-perfect of what the ouput is….. but emi and cross-talk still affect the circuits when crammed into something has high-density as a laptop mobo.
the problem with digital through optical fiber is that at some point on both the sending and receiving end it is still analog through copper and as susceptible to interference as anything else.
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That’s the problem with copper wire, yes. That’s why using optics to get the signal from point A to point B is better, because you could run it through the middle of a nuclear reactor and the signal won’t be affected.
It could have been due to your mp3 software suffering from buffer underrun since it was competing for disk access. IMO, corruption of digital data due to RF interference is probably the least likely culprit. The inteference would have to be pretty severe. And, if it was that severe, why weren’t more critical components affected?
It’s only the final playback stage that is analog. Digital data from CDs, DVDs, Bluray, etc. are not converted to analog until it reaches a DAC and sent to an amp and speaker.
even when NO mp3 is playing, using the trackpad results in a slight hum on many laptops when connected to high amplification. Stop using the trackpad and no more hum.
That’s the problem with onboard "goodies" — especially with laptops… teh traces are simply too crammed together.
The issue is whether the hum is picked up digitally or by the analog portion of the output. Given the "all-or-nothing" nature of digital signals, it seems unlikely that digital corruption would manifest itself as a hum.
a hum is a sinusoidal wave. digital pulses, when occuring at high frequency do represent a similar peak>peak pattern.
You’re still thinking analog. Digital signals don’t simply mix like analog signals do. The chances that noise would alter the bitstream in such a way that it sounds like a hum was mixed in with the original content is probably somewhere near the probability of a monkey randomly mashing a keyboard and typing up the complete works of shakespeare.
If you’ve ever watched analog TV with rabbit ears, you’ve probably seen snow or ghosting. A small amount of noise disrupts the signal, but the intended content is still visible behind the static. With digital tv broadcasts, the signal can absorb some interference without altering the bitstream. But once that noise threshold is crossed, you don’t get static, you get a screen full of colored blocks.
It’s all or nothing in the digital realm, so if your audio isn’t completely obliterated, it’s probably not data corruption.
correct, it’s not data corruption. It’s crosstalk and emi.
crosstalk and emi are the cause, data corruption is the effect. If there is no data corruption, then how exactly is the optical output affected as you previously stated?
The point is, you won’t hear a hum if you get EM interference in a digital signal. You’ll hear clicks and pops.
correct. the point I’ve been trying to make the entire damn time.
let’s just call it NOISE. NOISE that is NOT supposed to be there.
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