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[swantzilla]

My HTPC currently has a cheap(Siig) soundcard that I am using the optical out to a Yamaha RX-V1. My question is if I am letting the receiver do the digital decoding, how good of a soundcard do I need? I ordered an Asus Xonar DS because I noticed it does higher sampling rates than the Siig does. The Siig gives me a choice of 48KHZ. The Yamaha will go to 96KHZ.  I also am using this HTPC for Blu Ray playback. The Xonar DS does not have both  DTS and DD decoders but the Yamaha Receiver does. Now back to my original question, since the receiver is doing all the digital to analog conversion, does a more expensive sound card make sense or did I waste my money?

[mykillk]

Unfortunately, no, I don't see any benefit to the Xonar, especially for dolby digital and dts streams. The only possible benefit is in being able to upsample PCM content to 96 khz but frankly I prefer keeping my sample rate in its native format (using WASAPI Event Style), which for almost all content is going to be 48 khz or lower.

In the future though, I know that the movie industry is starting to move towards 96 khz instead of 48 khz for the output samplerate. See: http://www.whathifi.com/news/dolby-enables-advanced-96khz-upsampling-on-blu-ray-discs

So your Xonar DS will be able to output that 96 khz natively to your reciever but with your old sound card you would have to downsample. So while I don't see much benefit at the current time the Xonar will be more natively compatible down the road.

[swantzilla]

Thanks for the reply. All this re-sampling gets confusing. With the new card it also would be able to output 44.1 natively also which the current card cannot.

[mykillk]

Thanks for the reply. All this re-sampling gets confusing. With the new card it also would be able to output 44.1 natively also which the current card cannot.

Ah, well that's a real benefit you can make use of. Like I said before, I think it's preferable to keep content to its native sample rate so the more sample rates supported the better. And there definitely is lots of 44.1khz content out there.

[swantzilla]

So if I understand correctly, as long as I keep everything digital, then a expensive soundcard is not needed. If I elected to let it do the decode and go analog into the receiver, then a better soundcard would be better. Thanks. Wish I could go directly into the receiver instead of through a soundcard. All the resampling cannot be good. Thank you.

[mschneid]

Seems to me that what you want is for your sound card to decode the high resolution blue ray audio formats, have your pc process the digital channels for room correction, volume level  and then push them out as 7.1 analog channels.   (Not sure what the best card is for this job)

Audiophiles eschew that route because, the PC is a terribly noisy electrical environment where the DACs and Preamps must be clean for good sound... Moreover,  you are constrained by the usual 1 -2 meter analog cable lengths.

Alternatively, you processes the digital file with MC room correction, volume control, base management, etc and then get an 8 channel DAC which then pushes  out 8 analog channels to your amplifier.   (I follow Matt s journey with interest)

At the moment, I think a PC with blue ray disk reader and blue ray hi res files pushing digital out an hdmi connection to a AV receiver with the on board software for decoding and room correction is the optimal solution.

The coax/tos link output is so dated and mediocre sounding.

[mykillk]

So if I understand correctly, as long as I keep everything digital, then a expensive soundcard is not needed.

Yes.

If I elected to let it do the decode and go analog into the receiver, then a better soundcard would be better.

Yes, but not recommended for the reasons outlined by the other poster. Without expensive equipment you're going to get significantly better sound quality output with SPDIF than analog RCA connections. Not to mention one cable instead of 6

Thanks. Wish I could go directly into the receiver instead of through a soundcard.

No, you already are going directly into your AVR through SPDIF. A SPDIF is always going to associated with a soundcard. What you want to do is basically set your sound card to "bypass" mode by sending the undecoded Dolby Digital / DTS streams onto your receiver. A sound card is always going to be involved in the picture, you just don't want it to actually do anything

All the resampling cannot be good. Thank you.

If  you are sending Dolby Digital or DTS signals to your receiever, there will be no resampling. One of the advantages of those digital signals is that they can "inform" the receiver about the sample rate  of the source material and your receiver will "re-initialize" itself to that samplerate.

For other, non Dolby or DTS sources, one of the big advantages of using WASAPI or ASIO is that they bypass the windows sound mixer and will also "inform" your AVR about the samplerate. Think of them as a digital wrapper around analog audio. So that's a reason why the Xonar actually does have a benefit, it would be able to handle the 44.1khz sources while your older sound card would not (and you would have manually resample 44.1khz material in the DSP Studio to 48khz. Yuck!)

But, ultimately, given your situation with using SPDIF, I would recommended wrapping analog audio in a Dolby Digital container (Look in the DSP Studio for this option). You cannot output multichannel analog audio over SPDIF. But you can output multichannel analog audio wrapped in a Dolby Digital container over SPDIF. With HDMI, which can output multichannel analog audio, you'd get better results using WASAPI or ASIO as your digital wrapper, but for SPDIF Dolby Digital is a better option. Which, in the end, takes away the one lone advantage to your Xonar card  


Part of the reason it's all so confusing is that "analog" audio can mean two different things depending on the context.

An "analog" signal can mean PCM, which is actually a digital representation of analog audio. A DAC converts these PCM signals into genuine analog signals.
A real analog signal would be, for example, the signal transmitted out of your computer via an RCA cable (if you were doing the decoding on your PC), or the signal traveling out of your receiver to the speakers.

[mwillems]

Seems to me that what you want is for your sound card to decode the high resolution blue ray audio formats, have your pc process the digital channels for room correction, volume level  and then push them out as 7.1 analog channels.   (Not sure what the best card is for this job)

Audiophiles eschew that route because, the PC is a terribly noisy electrical environment where the DACs and Preamps must be clean for good sound... Moreover,  you are constrained by the usual 1 -2 meter analog cable lengths.

Alternatively, you processes the digital file with MC room correction, volume control, base management, etc and then get an 8 channel DAC which then pushes  out 8 analog channels to your amplifier.   (I follow Matt s journey with interest)

At the moment, I think a PC with blue ray disk reader and blue ray hi res files pushing digital out an hdmi connection to a AV receiver with the on board software for decoding and room correction is the optimal solution.

The coax/tos link output is so dated and mediocre sounding.

Not commenting on the relative merits of the various approaches, but if you do want a 7.1 analog output soundcard, I can personally recommend the Asus DX, or the Asus Essence ST (with the H6 add-on).  The DX is cheaper, but the ST/H6 combo is nicer.  I've used both as my primary signal source, and I do all of my routing and decoding on my PC (I have a few power amps that have no receiver features driving my speakers).  Both cards have very low THD+N ratings, and I've used both with very sensitive compression drivers with no complaints. 

You ultimately may be better off outputting a digital signal to your receiver as described above (especially since you already have the receiver), but if you want to go the analog output internal soundcard route, there are high quality multi-channel soundcards available.