[Solved] Soundcard SPDIF vs Graphics Card Sound via HDMI. SPDIF vs HDMI??

Forum CPU & Components : Sound Cards [Solved] Soundcard SPDIF vs Graphics Card Sound via HDMI. SPDIF vs HDMI??

Sorry if this has been asked before, but I couldn't find any answer.

I have an AVR powering my 7.1 surround theater setup at home. I'm looking to eventually get both of the following:

HT | OMEGA Claro Halo XT Soundcard

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Prod [...] llFullInfo

EVGA 768-P3-1360-TR GeForce GTX 460

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Prod [...] llFullInfo

My questions are
1: Will these two conflict horribly sound driver wise?
2: How about for surround sound in games such as half-life 2.
3: Is it better to go with the SPDIF Out of the sound card to my AVR or the HDMI from the video card to my AVR?

Very confusing. I'd like 5.1 and 7.1 support.

Reply to silenkiller

Best answer

1: Not likely (VERY unlikely in fact; I have my ASUS Xonar D2 and my sound drivers for both my onboard and 4890 realtek chipset installed, with no conflicts)

2: Both will do surround no problem; its the game sound engine that determines what level of surround sound is supported, not the soundcard.

3: With SPDIF, you are limited to only three formats: 2.0 uncompressed audio, Dolby Digital, and DTS. Assuming you have decoding support for either Dolby or DTS on your AVR (which you almost certainly do), you can enable either Dolby Digital Live or DTS-Connect (or DTS:Neo PC, depending on what there're calling it) from the soundcard to enable the real-time conversion of uncompressed 5.1 audio to either of these formats, giving you the ability to output 5.1 over SPDIF.

With HDMI, you can simply set your output to 5.1/7.1, as HDMI has the necessary bandwidth to pass through uncompressed surround sound audio.

The soundcard, even using SPDIF, will give better quality, but not as much as an analog hookup would give. (For audio, analog > digital). If you want to use 7.1 with the Halo XT though, you HAVE to go analog, as SPDIF simply doesn't have the bandwith to pass through any existing 7.1 sound format.

Message quoted 1 times

------------------------------

http://valid.canardpc.com/cache/banner/1647132.png

Reply to gamerk316

gamerk316 wrote :

Wow thank you for the informative post. Any idea as to whether I can use the HDMI out of the graphics card only for audio and not video? As in, I still want my video to go to my computer monitor, but audio go to my a/v receiver?

Reply to silenkiller

Best answer selected by silenkiller.

Reply to silenkiller

This topic has been closed by Mousemonkey

------------------------------

http://img545.imageshack.us/img545/3995/bl11.gif

Reply to Mousemonkey

Related content

See all topics related to "Soundcard SPDIF vs Graphics Card Sound via HDMI. SPDIF vs HDMI??"

Tom's Hardware > Forum > CPU & Components > Sound Cards > [Solved] Soundcard SPDIF vs Graphics Card Sound via HDMI. SPDIF vs HDMI??

Go to:

Help |
Forum rules

There are 2100 identified and unidentified users. To see the list of identified users, Click here.

Page generated in 0.616 seconds

Please mind

You are about to answer a thread that has been inactive for more than 6 months.
If you still wish to proceed, please ensure that your posting is original and does not duplicate or overlap any prior responses to this thread.

Add a reply Cancel