Speaker Connections

[skyxliner]

Hi,
I am planning on purchasing the logitech z5500 5.1 speakers.

My question is, my ASUS motherboard comes with a s/pdif output card. Would using this card to connect to my speakers receive a BETTER quality as oppose to buying a soundcard such as audigy 2 and connecting it that way?

my speaker already comes with a hardware decoder including all the movies and those types of audio features. thx and ect

hope someone can help me out thanks

some strange reason, my mobo manual says my spdif output supports 5.1 audio but in my driver cmedia program config, it seems to only support 2 channels for spdif

 

[Audiacc]

"My question is, my ASUS motherboard comes with a s/pdif output card. Would using this card to connect to my speakers receive a BETTER quality as oppose to buying a soundcard?"

if you are going to use only spdif connection between the card and speakers, I'd say your ASUS mobo chip will suffice

my speaker already comes with a hardware decoder including all the movies and those types of audio features. thx and ect

As long as you are not heavily into gaming, you will not need 6 channel analog connection to the speakers. So as I said, your Logitek decoder will do the job. (Gamers need analog connection for some special effects that cannot be sent digitally).

Well, actually, I checked Audigy specs, it also decodes DVD Audio... If you have some music in this format, neither mobo audio nor decoder will handle that

some strange reason, my mobo manual says my spdif output supports 5.1 audio but in my driver cmedia program config, it seems to only support 2 channels for spdif

Via spdif output you can send either stereo PCM or 5.1 ac3 signal. If it is 5.1 ac3 stream you are actually bypassing the souncard, all DACs etc, therefore the option for 5.1. is not there. But do not worry, your decoder should receive the signal and decode it properly.

 

[skyxliner]

if i use spdif output, does that mean more strain on my resources or is it less since its sending directly...

 

[Audiacc]

that depends...
Normally with SPDIF you bypass the soundcard which means less strain for PC. There are some, well, few soundcards that ENcode into Dolby and send the output signal thru SPDIF. That is a serious effort and many systems cannot cope with that. But if you take regular sound card and set it to send signal (Stereo PCM or your Dolby/DTS 5.1/6.1. stream from the movie) thru SPDIF this should not create any strain

 

[Spiffyfast]

Most sound cards will not output a 5.1 signal via the spdif or fiber optic signal only through the analog connection, check out this thread for more information on getting surround sound from your pc

http://forums.audioholics.com/forums/showthread.php?t=12741

 

[Audiacc]

all cards that I know will output 5.1. if the source is already in Dolby. Problem lies in 5.1 sound in games which cannot be usually sent thru SPDIF - unless there is live dolby encoder. Soundstorm and some envy24 cards like HDA Digital X-Mystique 7.1 from Bluegears have this feature, however the loss of quality may occur.
From the thread mentioned in the post above have a look on the last post from Latent:
"There is one major problem with this live DD or DTS encoding and that is the loss of quality due to the compression of the sound into these formats. Also these live converters probably have lower quality than the ones used by a movie studio to produce a DVD. 6Ch analog out from a good sound card will probably still give you better quality sound in the end. So until someone makes something that encodes to 96khz/24bit 7.1 channel PCM over IEEE-1394 from a PC we won't be able to eat our cake and have it as well."