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[csimon]

Forgive the question if its basic, but if I've got onboard sound which has SPDIF output and take that into an AV amp for conversion, is there any advantage in getting a superior external soundcard and using SPDIF from that?  External soundcards are always thought to be superior to onboard sound but if using SPDIF, does it matter, i.e. are external soundcards/DACs only better if you're using analogue outputs?

[mwillems]

Forgive the question if its basic, but if I've got onboard sound which has SPDIF output and take that into an AV amp for conversion, is there any advantage in getting a superior external soundcard and using SPDIF from that?  External soundcards are always thought to be superior to onboard sound but if using SPDIF, does it matter, i.e. are external soundcards/DACs only better if you're using analogue outputs?

It's a question that leads to some disagreements around here, but here's my two cents.  I think that for the most part in this context "bits are bits," and a properly functioning digital output should be indistinguishable no matter the source.  The only measurable potential issue with sound quality of SPDIF sources  (that I'm aware of)  is jitter, but that may or may not be audible at the levels typically found in home systems. It also may or may not be a real issue with any given SPDIF output, and some DACs have methods to "clean it up" at the far end.  Here's a really good article on jitter if you're curious: http://nwavguy.blogspot.com/2011/02/jitter-does-it-matter.html

Bottom line, I wouldn't lose a lot of sleep over it unless you have a very old or obviously malfunctioning SPDIF output.  SPDIF does have real format limitations (only supports two channels without compression, etc.), but those are issues with any SPDIF source internal or external.  

In my opinion, the only reason to get an external soundcard in your position is if either 1) you're unhappy with the DAC in your AV amp and want a lower noise analog output and/or 2) you want more channels than you can get with SPDIF (and can't use HDMI for some reason).  

[gtgray]

I have found differences that are pretty obvious. You really have to just try it. There is no reason that integrated SPDIF can't be a great source. Bit rates very from codec to codec and are one issue. Noise levels are another. Your choice of outboard DAC could be a big deal in that some DACs will accept 24 Bit 192k only on SPDIF coax, while only doing 24bit 96k on USB or Toslink. Some will do 192k over all three. The VLINK 192 USB to SPDIF converter is a high regarded device though it has recently been discontinued. Internal noise whether on the USB bus or via on board audio or 3rd party card can swamp whatever DAC you are using whether outboard or in your receiver. Toslink seems to alleviate this to a great degree but you may have bit rate/bandwidth limitations on either computer source or DAC side using Toslink.

[pcstockton]

of course it matters.  Not every transport is created equally.

[InflatableMouse]

In my opinion, the only reason to get an external soundcard in your position is if either 1) you're unhappy with the DAC in your AV amp and want a lower noise analog output and/or 2) you want more channels than you can get with SPDIF (and can't use HDMI for some reason). 

I agree with you that it shouldn't matter if things are working properly. I can think of another reason though: drivers. Some cards simply have bad drivers, resample everything to something set in their control panel and yet others might not allow the application to switch outputs. Then there are cards that suffer from all those (Asus Xonar for example ).

[csimon]

Hmm, obviously not as straightforward as I hoped!

I'm aware of the audiophile arguments, jitter etc, and I'm not interested in that, and I'm also aware that different hardware will have different features such as sampling rates. But all things being equal I was just wondering if a higher quality sound card produces a "higher quality" digital output somehow. I'm also of the "digital is digital" opinion but couldn't get my head around why external soundcards are globally touted as being superior to onboard sound, if they have digital output and you're feeding another DAC with it. It's just an unnecessary link in the chain. It's obviously just the DAC component that's being referred to as being superior and the choice of sound card depends on whether it will do a better job that the AV Amp that is at the end of the chain.

Thank you to everyone for chiming in.

[InflatableMouse]

Hmm, obviously not as straightforward as I hoped!

I'm aware of the audiophile arguments, jitter etc, and I'm not interested in that, and I'm also aware that different hardware will have different features such as sampling rates. But all things being equal I was just wondering if a higher quality sound card produces a "higher quality" digital output somehow. I'm also of the "digital is digital" opinion but couldn't get my head around why external soundcards are globally touted as being superior to onboard sound, if they have digital output and you're feeding another DAC with it. It's just an unnecessary link in the chain. It's obviously just the DAC component that's being referred to as being superior and the choice of sound card depends on whether it will do a better job that the AV Amp that is at the end of the chain.

Thank you to everyone for chiming in.

I don't think this will ever be straightforward because there will always be people who hear things others don't - placebo or not, who's to say?

I believe that much of the debate for better soundcards for digital links come from the early days where components weren't as cheap and easy to build as they are today. I guess back in the early days things were harder and more expensive to produce, less accurate, more jitter, distortion (ever heard your mouse movements over your speakers?) and depended on software to process certain things on relatively slow cpu's (whereas most things are hardware accellerated today). I believe these are things of the past, better components and cheaper production has solved much of these problems (contrary to analog outputs which are IMO still as bad as they ever were).

So to me, digital is digital and bits are bits. I've never been able to hear a difference between my Xonar digital outputs, the onboard, or any other digital output for that matter. As long as bits arrive, that is all there is to it as far as I'm concerned. From there on the DAC and analog components make all the difference.

[mwillems]

I don't think this will ever be straightforward because there will always be people who hear things others don't - placebo or not, who's to say?

I believe that much of the debate for better soundcards for digital links come from the early days where components weren't as cheap and easy to build as they are today. I guess back in the early days things were harder and more expensive to produce, less accurate, more jitter, distortion (ever heard your mouse movements over your speakers?) and depended on software to process certain things on relatively slow cpu's (whereas most things are hardware accellerated today). I believe these are things of the past, better components and cheaper production has solved much of these problems (contrary to analog outputs which are IMO still as bad as they ever were).

So to me, digital is digital and bits are bits. I've never been able to hear a difference between my Xonar digital outputs, the onboard, or any other digital output for that matter. As long as bits arrive, that is all there is to it as far as I'm concerned. From there on the DAC and analog components make all the difference.

This is pretty much my opinion on the matter.  An external soundcard can be a huge improvement if you're using it as a DAC, but if all you're doing is sending a digital signal to a pre-existing DAC with modern equipment, I'm not sure there's much sound quality advantage to sending a digital signal to another box, to send a second digital signal to another box.  

I agree with the posters above about the capability/technical issues: of course there are potential technical advantages to an outboard DAC if you have driver problems, if your interface won't let you send high sample rate audio any other way, or if your current SPDIF source isn't well-behaved, for sure. However, in terms of sound quality (as opposed to improved capability), I've never been able to distinguish two different digital outputs unless one of them was measurably broken.  For example, I have three or four modern DACs around the house, and they all have USB, SPDIF coax, and SPDIF optical inputs.  I've tried feeding those DACs with different source types (USB, Coax, Optical) and different sources of the same type (two different Coax sources, two different optical sources, etc.).  

On any given DAC, I cannot distinguish digital input sources, at all.  I can distinguish between the analog outputs of the various DACs, but that's because they have pretty radically different noise floors/output stages.  Your mileage may vary, but I can't hear the difference between my onboard SPDIF output and the SPDIF output of a $750 external interface, when fed to the same DAC. The difference in the analog outputs of those two, on the other hand, is obvious to everyone I've ever played them for.

But, I think gtgray made a good point: if you can, try it for yourself and see.  Borrow an external DAC, or see if you can demo one from a shop, and try using different digital inputs.  Make sure you're comparing apples to apples, but there's no substitute for experience.

I'm also of the "digital is digital" opinion but couldn't get my head around why external soundcards are globally touted as being superior to onboard sound, if they have digital output and you're feeding another DAC with it. It's just an unnecessary link in the chain. It's obviously just the DAC component that's being referred to as being superior and the choice of sound card depends on whether it will do a better job that the AV Amp that is at the end of the chain.

I agree. I think the reason that external soundcards have a good rep is, in part, because legacy digital audio was kind of dicey (as Inflatable Mouse noted), and, in part, because you can buy externals with better (and better isolated) DACs than most AV Amps have.  I think, with modern equipment, sending a USB or SPDIF signal to an external box so that it can in turn send a SPDIF signal to another box is (in most cases) very unlikely to improve sound quality, and could, potentially, introduce additional jitter (depending on how the pass-through works).  Obviously if you have specific technical limitations you're trying to overcome, that's a different story.

[gtgray]

Just to add color to this whole thing I have an Intel Media Board Clarksdale. It has no digital audio ouput other than HDMI. I assumed the board worked fine. It seemed to either with HDMI from the intel chip or via an Nvidia GPU. I had a FiiO E17 so I though hmnn I bought The FiiO DAC because I have an HP All in one with simply dreadful analog audio out and that is the only audio out on this touch screen all in one.

So I bought the FiiO and it made a huge, drastic improvement in audio on the HP machine. This was a business version of their SmartTouch all in ones so I imagine that is why there was no digital out and HP cheaped out on the internal sound.

Anyway , when I took the FiiO to this Intel Media Board and plugged it into my USB port it made so much loud noise I though I blew up my $300 Pioneer headphones. I said okay I will put a Claro Plus card in a PCI slot I have laying around here in the Clarksdale... The Claro  was not recognized by the Intel Bios. I stuck an M- Audio 192 in there and it was detected I loaded the drivers and it screeched with static horribly just like going USB to the E17 Fiio DAC. Clearly that machine has some bad EMI on the Southbridge side of the board.

Next I pulled out a little Atom Ion I had laying around and put in the M-Audio 192 in the one available slot. Along time ago I had tried the Claro in there and it worked but was very noisy, it was unusable. The M-Audio 192 sounded okay but was a bit noisy too not like the Omega Claro but like cheap onboard audio.  I then connected to the onboard Toslink and that sounded quite nice, not great but okay. It would be workable except you could tell that it was struggling when you upsampled. The build in codec a Realtek had the right Bit rates but I suspect that their were timing issues with such a low performing PC.  Next I stuck the M-Audio card in a Sandy Bridge G6120 and it sounded fantastic throught SPDIF Coax straight to Sony AVR, again even better to Fiio DAC. Sadly it was flakey and would not work consistently.. sometimes it would just barely output with lots static.

I pulled the Claro back out of the box and plugged it in to this SandyBridge which is just a cheapie Biostar H61M and not only did it detect it, the sound seemed pretty clean both on toslink and SPDIF. This BioStar board has  a low end Realtek on it that will do the sample and bit rates but it has NO ports on back panel and I don't have a cable to connect to mainboard HD Audio header.. This board by  the way also plays the FiiO E17 cleanly via USB... so not only are they not all the same it is kind of a box of chocolates. You never know what you are going to get.

If you follow almost all the current high end efforts on USB DACs it is around isolating the DAC from the PC noise and doing a conversion of USB to SPDIF. So it is not just what the quality of the of hardware passing the digital out, it is the whole enviorment.. The efforts being made to get a clean source from the PC for the more expensive DACs is because the PC itself is a pretty messy place to source audio. I have half a mind to try a PCI based audio board in the Clarksdale machine and see if it can generate clean digital audio that way.

I guess the real question is why not use HDMI direct to the AVR. It clearly works okay but you can't experiment with DACs very easily.  I actually have a way to get digital audio on a COAX out that came from HDMI.. My DVDO DUO will do that but the bit and sample rates get dropped down 16 bit 48K.

[pcstockton]

so not only are they not all the same it is kind of a box of chocolates. You never know what you are going to get.

If you follow almost all the current high end efforts on USB DACs it is around isolating the DAC from the PC noise and doing a conversion of USB to SPDIF. So it is not just what the quality of the of hardware passing the digital out, it is the whole enviorment.. The efforts being made to get a clean source from the PC for the more expensive DACs is because the PC itself is a pretty messy place to source audio.

Exactly.  Well put

[csimon]

it made so much loud noise I though I blew up my $300 Pioneer headphones..... .and it screeched with static horribly.....it worked but was very noisy, it was unusable.... The M-Audio 192 sounded okay but was a bit noisy too.....sometimes it would just barely output with lots static.

Blimey, it sounds like you've had some very bad luck with all this faulty hardware.  I've never, ever had any trouble like you have described, I'd have returned it all!

[mwillems]

Next I pulled out a little Atom Ion I had laying around and put in the M-Audio 192 in the one available slot. Along time ago I had tried the Claro in there and it worked but was very noisy, it was unusable. The M-Audio 192 sounded okay but was a bit noisy too not like the Omega Claro but like cheap onboard audio.  I then connected to the onboard Toslink and that sounded quite nice, not great but okay. It would be workable except you could tell that it was struggling when you upsampled. The build in codec a Realtek had the right Bit rates but I suspect that their were timing issues with such a low performing PC.  Next I stuck the M-Audio card in a Sandy Bridge G6120 and it sounded fantastic throught SPDIF Coax straight to Sony AVR, again even better to Fiio DAC. Sadly it was flakey and would not work consistently.. sometimes it would just barely output with lots static.

That sounds like a miserable, staticky odyssey.  I'm really sorry to hear you had to go through all that    

Just for your peace of mind: I have an M-Audio 192 myself (got it in 2008), and the M-audio 192 SPDIF static/flakiness (even when things are otherwise working well) is a very common defect of that card (and some of the other Delta series cards).  The SPDIF-out on mine has always been flaky intermittently.  If you search the M-audio forums you'll find hundreds of complaints about flaky/staticy SPDIF output on that model.  The card is a twelve-year old design, and they've never fixed it (and never gotten their drivers sorted out).  It's been a year or two since I fired it up, but the advice on the forums at the time was (I'm not making this up) to keep a batch file that resets the audio kernel on your desktop and just reset it whenever the card gets flaky!  When I was talking above about "well-behaved modern" SPDIF outputs, the "badly-behaved legacy" exception I was thinking about in my head was the M-audio 192!  

I also have a Fiio e17 (great value for the money), and (thankfully) I've never heard any difference no matter what I plugged it into (three different full-size motherboards and two laptops).  I guess I should consider myself fortunate!

[gtgray]

The  Creative and Asus lines are notorious for driver issues as well. So to wrap up I guess the answer to the original posters question is that it shouldn't matter so much but it may very well matter and don't necessarily think that you may not have an ugly undiscovered problem with USB based solutions because you mainboard itself might seem to be a perfect specimen and output what appears to be perfectly on HDMI but may not be a good PCI or USB host for audio. I had issues with Atom Ion on HDMI that should have been expected in that performance level PC.. It could never do Dolby Digital plus well over HDMI and forget about ROHQ.


As for that batch file I try to run headless or effectively headless when playing audio launching and app to reset the kernel doesn't sound like it would work. And I doubt it would work at all in the case of this specific card. It got so it would be not even clear on a cold boot. I really did not care about SPDIF or USB for audio until I had a need to run headphones and got the HP TouchSmart  all in one (super cheap from a brother) and it had the analog only output that made bad laptops sound seem great... and thus began my Odyssey. Fortunately it has reasonable USB.. and I bought the E17 which brought me in to the hyperbole fraught world of external DACs.

Funny thing about USB it can work fine for everything else and make your USB DAC totally useless. I have a several year old 7-port D-Link USB hub. It is not real pretty but it provides quite solid power to a USB DAC and the E17 definitely sounds better with it inline on several of my machines I have here. I am kind of in the market for a desktop DAC but the more I read the more hokum is in the claims. DACs appear to be black wholes of snake oil and it seems clean power is one of the best differentiators.
 

[pcstockton]

http://www.naimaudio.com/hifi-products/pdt-type/dac-v1

[mwillems]

The  Creative and Asus lines are notorious for driver issues as well.

Oh for sure.  In my case the difference was that I eventually got working drivers for my Asus cards, whereas the M-audio 192 is still goofy.  I know everybody wasn't equally lucky with their Asus cards though.  I wasn't trying to bash M-audio, just pointing out that the SPDIF problems with the 192 are a recognized problem, and, because it's an older design, it may not ever get fixed.

As for that batch file I try to run headless or effectively headless when playing audio launching and app to reset the kernel doesn't sound like it would work. And I doubt it would work at all in the case of this specific card. It got so it would be not even clear on a cold boot.

Oh man, that is pretty bad.  I was only half seriously suggesting that work around, it was the best thing the M-audio folks had to suggest at the time  

I really did not care about SPDIF or USB for audio until I had a need to run headphones and got the HP TouchSmart  all in one (super cheap from a brother) and it had the analog only output that made bad laptops sound seem great... and thus began my Odyssey. Fortunately it has reasonable USB.. and I bought the E17 which brought me in to the hyperbole fraught world of external DACs.

Funny thing about USB it can work fine for everything else and make your USB DAC totally useless. I have a several year old 7-port D-Link USB hub. It is not real pretty but it provides quite solid power to a USB DAC and the E17 definitely sounds better with it inline on several of my machines I have here. I am kind of in the market for a desktop DAC but the more I read the more hokum is in the claims. DACs appear to be black wholes of snake oil and it seems clean power is one of the best differentiators.
 

I'm pretty happy with my e17 overall, especially since it can be converted into a line source with a $10 add on.  I also run a USB hub and haven't noticed any difference based on which usb port I plug the e17 into (or whether I run it off of SPDIF or USB), but I may just have lucked out with my MoBos.  

The only USB DAC I've personally heard that's reasonably priced and sounds better (to me) than the e17 is the ODAC.  I grabbed one last year for about $125 and it sounds awesome.  One of the design features was an attempt to isolate the analog and digital power supplies:

http://nwavguy.blogspot.com/2012/04/odac-released.html

I'll confess it sounds the same to me no matter what I plug it into, which may be evidence of good design, or may be evidence of my poor ears.  It has some limitations (only USB input, USB-power only, only supports sample rates up to 96KHz), but is otherwise pretty amazing.

[TKOZAK]

New to JRiver and love it.  Old fashioned audiophile trying to move to the digital world.  Have some questions about some things I am unable to do with JRiver.

Using HP desktop with Beats Audio soundcard with IDT High Definition Drivers.  Attempting to adjust Output Format in DSP Studio and no changes are allowed, only allows use with no changes to Output Format.  Is this because of the sound card and drivers I am using or are there other issues?

[InflatableMouse]

New to JRiver and love it.  Old fashioned audiophile trying to move to the digital world.  Have some questions about some things I am unable to do with JRiver.

Using HP desktop with Beats Audio soundcard with IDT High Definition Drivers.  Attempting to adjust Output Format in DSP Studio and no changes are allowed, only allows use with no changes to Output Format.  Is this because of the sound card and drivers I am using or are there other issues?

Welcome.

I think you'd best start your own thread but maybe an Admin can split this up to its own thread.

What output mode do you have configured? Click the Equalizer icon upper right hand corner and open Playback Options. Under Audio/Audio Device, which device is listed?

[gtgray]

One more data point. I tried to make use of a system board that is noisy on the Southbridge side (USB and PCI) the system works great otherwise by installing a PCIe soundcard in it. There is obviously some kind of ground loop as only audio devices on PCI or USB are affected. The PCIe I bought for it is the SoundBlaster Z at about $100. It is advertised as doing 24 bit / 192 kHz

It doesn't. It will only do 96 kHz at least on SPDIF (optical).

So nothing is straightforward. You can waste a lot of time. The PC I have with the Claro plus doesn't want to sleep and that can be a real b*tch to troubleshoot.

Don't you just love chocolates?

[6233638]

It doesn't. It will only do 96 kHz at least on SPDIF (optical).

Does anything? I was under the impression that optical was limited to 24/96.

[Micromecca]

Does anything? I was under the impression that optical was limited to 24/96.

Optical SPDIF is usually rated upto 24/96 but is capable of 24/192.
I am able to get 24/192 into my Audiolab M-DAC over optical SPDIF with one cable yet not with another  


To the OP: I have had the best results by using either Optical SPDIF or Async USB with an Isolator.

EDIT:-

John Westlake - The Designer of the M-DAC, has this to say on the subject:

The optical does function to 192kHz, its just most optical sources and Cheap Plastic Fiber are so bad that its not a reliable connection - so rather then having to constantly field customer complaints that the MDAC’s Optical connection does not work at 192kHz (due to no fault of our own) - we have just rated them to 96kHz

[gtgray]

Optical SPDIF is usually rated upto 24/96 but is capable of 24/192.
I am able to get 24/192 into my Audiolab M-DAC over optical SPDIF with one cable yet not with another  


To the OP: I have had the best results by using either Optical SPDIF or Async USB with an Isolator.

EDIT:-

John Westlake - The Designer of the M-DAC, has this to say on the subject:

Even a cheap FiiO E17 works fine on optical 24/192. Pretty much everything I have tried has worked fine that way only the SoundBlaster Z won't do it with a pretty decent cable. So a 2 year old Denon midrange Denon has no problem with 24/192 on optical, a 4 year old Pioneer Elite, and a a cheapie 3 year old Sony AVR are all good with optical at those bit rates on optical, either from onboard Realtek chipsets or even the M-Audio 192. At this point I am just going to go straight HDMI to the Pioneer receiver which is just HDMI 1.1.

Also with the SoundBlaster Z playback device active the PC won't sleep or wake up from my remote.. pretty much a fail. On this PC since it appears any noise issues are limited to the Southbridge side of the bus I may pick up a PCIe USB 2.0 card and watch for the right DAC. Judging from the specs on the DAC in the Elite it an external would have to be very good to be noticeably better than what the Elite does over Toslink /SPDIF as it is. With the way JRiver has evolved HDMI 1.1 is not much of a drawback.

[spiggytopes]

This is an interesting topic.

I just connected a Qute HD to the pc optical output and it sounds just right ....

Today I experimented swapping between my Xonar Essence STX SPFDiF pass through and back to pc .....

I think that it sounds better through the pc; the bass is stronger and deeper, however, it is possible that the overall sound is clearer through the Xonar .... time will tell.

[Hitashi]

I agree with you that it shouldn't matter if things are working properly. I can think of another reason though: drivers. Some cards simply have bad drivers, resample everything to something set in their control panel and yet others might not allow the application to switch outputs. Then there are cards that suffer from all those (Asus Xonar for example ).

Well i have been testing today, a PCI soundcard  Asus Xonar used as SPDIF passthrough, connected by Tosslink to an external Stand alone DAC.

Tried an external Firewire connected Maudio Profire2626 that ran SPDIF passthrough connected by S/PDIF COAX to the same external stand alone DAC.

Using a Musical fidelity V-dac2, and there is absolutely no difference! I would have assumed that the  Maudio would have been superior for all the reasons people  have been discussing,  and yeah i was thinking along the same lines.  But there is literally no difference.  (except for the fact that Asus Xonar is running 24bit and  Profire2626 is running 32 bit and goes up to 192khz 24bit).

[JAVA Alive]

Theorically, most "good" DACs "recreate" digital signals from SPDIF with their own clocks thru PLLs.
Nealy any horrible can be sent to them without any impact, including jitter.

Practically, all blind tests show no difference between DACs (including sondcards) except low quality sound cards with hearable noise on analog output.

To answer your question :
  - avoid very low quality digital sources. You have many good choices for 50€, don't try to win 30€ when you put 1k or much more in just the speakers
  - some DACs can have real defects in the power supply, global conception or output stage. Take at least a famous brand, with a good chip inside (burrbrown or ESS by example) with a good support from distributor.
  - differences between good basic DACs and high end DACs are happening arround -120 or -140 db. When most of listening rooms have 60db dynamic, you understand that no difference can be hurd
  - some very high end products (10k and more) with very specific design sometimes really sound differently form other due to specific coloration. That is called distortion and should not be considered and high fidelity.

So to make it short : no impact of digital source and DAC (except of course satisfaction to have a beautifull box in your room) as long as you avoid very low quality products and stay with "normal" brand.