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[sanjayc]

Hello all! Am new to  MC and to this forum as well.

Am using the trial version and hope to upgrade to the licensed version soon.

Currently I have a Creative X-Fi Extremegaming sound card with optical toslink SPDIF out (24bits/96K) which I have connected to my Onkyo TX-NR5007 receiver with Monitor Audion 5.1 speaker setup (http://www.us.onkyo.com/model.cfm?m=TX-NR5007&class=Receiver&p=i)

My questions are:
1. When I doing a SPDIF out, I assume the DAC on my Onkyo is doing the D/A conversion before feeding the speaker. Is that correct? I also assume that the Onkyo DAC would be far better compared to Creative X-FI DAC.

2. If the above is true, does it matter what quality of sound card I have on the desktop, as long as digital data is output to the Onkyo DAC? Would an upgrade to M-Audio or Xonar soundcard result in better SQ?

Thanks.

[JimH]

Welcome.  I will give you a partial answer.

#2 is true.  If you send a digital stream to the device, the DAC on the device is used.

Here's an article on S/PDIF:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SP/DIF

I believe that S/PDIF can carry an analog or a digital signal.  With an optical connection for it, I think you're digital.

This will help:
http://wiki.jriver.com/index.php/Audio_Output_Modes

[mbagge]

Try the DLNA capability of your receiver to give you an idea of what sound quality you could expect.
You of course need uncompressed music, e.g. flac, to enjoy the full potential.

That way you use MC as a database and a graphical user interface to all your music and your Onkyo is doing all the rest. No sound card problems and no sound processing is done on the pc.

Your Onkyo remote can be programmed to control MC if you got an infrared eye on the computer. It works like charm when using theater mode in MC.

Enjoy.

ps. s/pdif is short for "Sony Philips Digital Interconnet Format" and is always digital and is using coax copper or toslink optical cables.

[Sandy B Ridge]

Even better - just keep it simple and connect the PC and amp with a single HDMI cable for full HD Video and HD audio. Use theaterview in MC16 as a frontend to control things, then you won't need a separate monitor. This is provided your motherboard or graphics card has HDMI of course!

There are all sorts of confusing arguments about 'digital jitter' over Optical SPDIF vs Coax SPDIF vs HDMI if you search hard for them on the Internet. However the digital data is the same however it is transmitted is my view. HDMI does it well for me.   Those arguments make me groan!

SBR