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Looking for a nice sound card for gaming and home theater use

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  • Sound Cards
  • Home Theatre
  • Audio
  • Components
Last response: in Components
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August 6, 2012 1:09:10 PM

Hello everyone.

I just finished my build. It's primarily used for gaming and is connected to my home theater.

I'm using onboard audio right now. I'm interested in buying a sound card to output 5.1 sound to my home theater. With my old build I had it connected via s/pdif for auido and dvi to hidmi cable for video.

My old 8800gts wasn't able to send audio through hdmi.

Basically is was:
S/PDIF from Creative Labs extreme gamer connected to Harmon Kardon receiver which of course is connected to my speakers.

DVI to HDMI cable connected to TV

Here are some questions.

1. Is the gtx 670 capable of sending audio through hdmi port?

2. Even if it does, I'm still hindered by onboard audio capabilities, correct?

3. With this type of setup Is it the sound card or AV receiver that break down the audio (5.1)?

My budget is $150

Your thoughts and suggestions are greatly appreciated.

More about : nice sound card gaming home theater

August 6, 2012 1:16:55 PM

LOBOBAST said:


1. Is the gtx 670 capable of sending audio through hdmi port?

2. Even if it does, I'm still hindered by onboard audio capabilities, correct?

3. With this type of setup Is it the sound card or AV receiver that break down the audio (5.1)?


1. Yes

2. No

3. AV receiver assuming we're not talking about the onboard.
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August 6, 2012 1:23:58 PM

mi1ez said:
1. Yes

2. No

3. AV receiver assuming we're not talking about the onboard.


So are you saying I won't be needing a sound card since the onboard audio sends the signal and the AV receiver breaks is down?
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August 6, 2012 5:13:33 PM

LOBOBAST said:
So are you saying I won't be needing a sound card since the onboard audio sends the signal and the AV receiver breaks is down?


When you connect via digital, the soundcards hardware does NOTHING. You go through the soundcards driver layer, the audio gets sent out as digital, and some other device will handle the conversion to analog.

If you are going to connect to a receiver, the best option is to send the audio from the GPU via HDMI, so you can avoid all those nasty SPDIF format/quality limitations.
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August 6, 2012 11:18:04 PM

gamerk316 said:
When you connect via digital, the soundcards hardware does NOTHING. You go through the soundcards driver layer, the audio gets sent out as digital, and some other device will handle the conversion to analog.

If you are going to connect to a receiver, the best option is to send the audio from the GPU via HDMI, so you can avoid all those nasty SPDIF format/quality limitations.


Ok, so the HDMI option is all automated then? I simply go to nvidia control panel, setup multiple displays (like I have been doing) then just play the movie and the audio signal will travel through the HDMI cable to my AVR to break it down??

I guess I was also under the assumption I had to use the toslink optical port from the back of the mobo.
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Best solution

August 7, 2012 9:38:16 AM

Assuming your receiver can pass the HDMI picture to the TV (Which I'm sure it can), then the best thing to do is run audio through your GPU.

GPU > Receiver > TV
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August 7, 2012 12:02:47 PM

^^ Exactly. All you should need is the NVIDIA audio driver, and you should be good to go using HDMI out from the GPU [or DVI-to-HDMI; works either way].
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August 7, 2012 10:39:45 PM

Ok thanks for the reply. I'll try installing the nvidia audio drivers as well.
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August 7, 2012 10:40:32 PM

Best answer selected by LOBOBAST.
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August 13, 2012 5:20:32 AM

I haven't installed the nvidia sound drivers yet. However, from the information I provided in my original post. Can anybody recommend a nice quality sound card for around $100-150??

60% gaming
35% movies
5% music
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August 14, 2012 8:53:25 PM

bump
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August 15, 2012 1:34:58 PM

$150 is overkill. Try HDMI with your graphics card before you spend anything!
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!