I watched the video and feel better informed but after watching it; it also left me with questions. I'd like some answers to these questions. The video seem to focus a lot on audio through headphones, but I'm curious to know, does this also apply with speakers or is that something completely different. I don't usually use headphones to listen to audio, but I use speakers primarily. There are a lot of points that the video touches on, does this also apply to speakers as well. Should I even bother looking at sound cards for this, or should I instead just use a receiver and plug it in with the onboard. Also, if you output the audio through optical, does the receiver do the work when processing sound or does the CPU still burn cycles for audio. Sorry if this all sounds like obvious questions, but I never thought too deeply about audio, I always thought that sound card audio was better than onboard, but now I feel that I really need to get a better understanding of how this works.
Find the connector on your motherboard that says S/P-DIF. That stands for "Sony/Philips Digital Interface". Connect one strand of a TP-cable to each pole of the two-pole S/P-DIF connector (on most motherboards, the connector is there but is not populated, even has no pins, so you'll have to do some very basic soldering). On the other side, connect them to the two poles of a standard RCA-plug. Connect that to the digital coaxial input of your receiver (instead of using the optical S/DIF, which transmits less data because it works with a very cheap LED-laser on the one side and a very cheap photocell on the other side, but is more resistant to interference, which is why you should use either a very good coax cable or simply a shielded TP-cable, TP-cables are great, they are very resistant to interference by design (TP stands for twisted pair, every pair of strands is twisted, and then those four twisted pairs are twisted against, which adds entropy in the position of any strand at any point in the length of the cable, which prevents standing waves, which keeps the noise floor low), are super cheap, are harder to destroy than coax cables, and you don't have to connect connectors with surgical precision to preserve the shielding).
Other option, use the digital audio from the HDMI connector of your graphics card. I do this for my desktop speakers. The HDMI-digital audio goes into the monitor, where there is a simple DAC and a simple op-amp (an op-amp, or operational amplifier, is a small 8-pin chip that is basically a very efficient almost ideal amplifier, with a very low output impedance, and it is designed to achieve an input impedance of 1 kOhm to 1 MOhm with very basic cheap parts. There is a huge advantage in using a DAC/op-amp combination inside a monitor v one that is in your computer chassis, in that the components in a monitor are inherently shielded for compliance, and that the oscillation frequency of the digital parts in the monitor is fixed and singular, and the same as the oscillation frequency of the power grid, and that brings along some benefits as to the power supply. If you plug in your active desktop speakers to the headphone output in the monitor, which grounds the crappy little speaker amp inside the monitor, you actually get a very clean signal with a very low output impedance to feed to your desktop speakers.
Sound cards can offer a benefit, if you don't buy them in a computer store, but in the professional audio department of a music store. In that case, the benefit lies in standards compliance (driverless operation), high bandwidth data (no loss), better amplification (just better quality parts and bigger and better capacitors etc, but most importantly, high voltage power supply to power the op-amp, because such an interface needs 48V for phantom power anyway, so they convert the power to 24-48V for everything, and calculate the implementation of the on-board op-amp for 24 V operation, which allows the op-amp to operate without clipping. As soon as the operational voltage is more than 15V, the audio coming from it immediately sounds much more open and dynamic, and treble is what treble should be, bass is what bass should be, etc...).
PC (consumer-grade) sound cards are shit by design. The most expensive ones are powered by a molex connector, so they are fed by an extra 12V line. It's better than the 3.3V or 5V of other PC soundcards, but it's not enough to make the audio sound transparent and realistic. It's just wasting money.
Some sound cards, professional and other, contain a DSP chip. Some of these are useful, as long as they work autonomously, and don't depend on software and drivers. Asus DSP chips suck by design, the old Creative DSP chips are actually quite handy, not because they are useful for audio quality in general, but because they offer two benefits: as such they provide a pretty intelligent correction of MP3-compression (the X-Fi part), and the DSP-chip can also be used for audio processing plug-ins when using the PC as a digital audio workstation. The latter feature is only available in linux, as only the linux drivers were opens ourced by creative, and the code needed was merged long ago in the linux kernel, so they operate driverless with all features. It's a pretty powerful DSP chip for it's age, you can for instance use it to calculate complex reverb algorithms etc... instead of putting that load on the CPU. The DSP can handle a lot of audio processing really fast, CPUs are nowhere near as efficient in doing that. In general, if you're not a recording musician, you don't need a dedicated sound card.
The power supply is the most important part of any audio circuit. The O2 amp for instance is powered by two 9V batteries, for 18 V of insulated, perfect DC power. Just that alone, makes it thousand times better than any internal PC solution.
Wow, I never knew audio could be that complex. I'll send a link to this thread to a relative who's a musician, who's looking into doing recordings on a pc he's going to custom build. Thanks for the info it's greatly appreciated. I have a Gigabyte GA-Z68A-D3H-B3 motherboard, the S/PDIF is populated and I don't have the greatest of confidence in my soldering abilities. However, the HDMI option seems like a good alternative, since I'm looking into upgrading my monitor anyway maybe I should look into it. If I were to look at using a receiver and connect to it with HDMI, will there be anything I should look out for?
Like many things the technology can be complex but the ideas are simple. You want to get the audio off the computer in digital representation. HDMI, optical TOSLINK, and SPDIF are all fine. USB (using a USB DAC) is also fine, although I've heard some games don't work...
HDMI is nice because it can handle 7 channels or bitstream (e.g. TrueHD) for movie watching. Optical and digital coax will deliver 2 channels nicely but not 7.
I was using an expensive Yamaha receiver but I get better stereo sound from a small 2 channel amp. So I wouldn't necessarily jump to using a receiver unless you already have one. Or, unless you want to enjoy Blu-rays.
What equipment do you have right now? Receiver? What inputs does it have? How many speakers?
And then, what do you want to move to. Movie watching in 5/7 channel surround sound, or, music listening.
It all comes down to how much you want out of your system and how loud you want to hear it .Your PC is no different to a Blu ray player or a gaming console. They all need a video and audio systems.
HDMI out of your video card is all you need from your PC. Optical is some what out of date when it comes to Theater systems being that it wont support HD audio such as Dolby TrueHD and DTS HD. if your just using stereo and playing though cheep speakers then you want notice a difference between the two. So if your going to be watching blu rays then HDMI is the one you want.
Now you need to think how loud you want to hear it. If your after a full 5.1 speaker setup then your going to need a AV receiver. If your just after a head phone setup then a DAC is all you realy need, but then you just going to get bombarded with mixed opinions and numbers. AV receivers range from $100 to $1000 to $10,000 depending on how loud and how much you can get out of your speakers. Also with a AV receiver your head phone jack is more then enough power being that its already an amp.
I hope this is simple enough to understand. I'm seeing way to many people getting confused with numbers and acronyms but using cheep speakers and Dr dre head phones, its just a face palm wast of time.
As for speakers and head phones, you can go on and on agen with the reviews and opinions with numbers and specs, but it all comes down to personal opinion. There your ears so you need to make the decision so always audition before buying provided you know what its plugged into. always audition on the purest and direct source as possible with no processing and alterations. Most Onkyo amps offer Pure audio for example.
If you want to know more then this site is not really the one you want to be asking these questions, you need to go to a Audio forum. But ya more then welcome to message me here if you want to know anything. One thing i warn you Audio is addictive but it never goes out of date, so take ya time and try out everything you can before making a decision.
I don't need super loud sound, I want a nice room filling sound. I'm not an audiophile, but I like to have a room filled with good sound. I have an old 5.1 receiver that does what I need it to do, I got it because it had the connections I needed at the time, and it wasn't super pricey for what I needed it. It was something basic, a Sony STR-DE685 receiver, I got it so I can hook up my consoles, dvd player, cable box etc,. I didn't have a lot of space, so I looked for some decent small speakers which after much testing at the store displays, I had found a set. I had a decent 5.1 surround sound for my needs, which didn't have to be turned up loud to get nice sound. After setting it all up, and firing it up watching a movie to test it, it was only set to volume lvl 8 and I was told to turn it down cause it was too loud. At the time I had a decent PC to do some casual gaming like Star Wars Jedi Knight 2: Jedi Outcast, Age of Mythologies, Age of Empires 2, etc,. But didn't really put a lot of time in getting good sound from PC, and thought the sound cards and speakers where as good as it were going to get. Oh how little did I know, and here I go off topic sorry about that.
Anyway again, I have an old Sony STR-DE685 receiver that I can hook my PC up to through Toslink cable, I was planning to upgrade my TV and Receiver, have yet to make the jump to HD tv, I've been doing everything on my PC as of late. I was looking to upgrade my receiver that has HDMI, which is why I was asking all sorts of questions, I have 5.1 speakers on my PC but they really aren't that great and sound quality is so-so. So I figured that I may as well look into seeing what my options are, the use would be to view movies, listen to music, get some good sound from my games, etc,.My old receiver has 1 coax audio input, and 3 S/PDIF Toslink connectors.
Anyway, to close out this little background of my limited interactions with audio, that's why I asked the questions I did after watching the Gaming Audio Myths. So, I'd like some proper knowledge for knowledgeable people, instead of deciding by marketing crap that I'm fed. (^_^)y
Hilmar, thanks for the background. I'm not an expert but I can make some remarks...
1. The natural suggestion is to use toslink or coax (S/PDIF) audio from the PC to the receiver, because it's an inexpensive thing to try. Normally the PC will send 2 channel PCM over the link.
2. When watching movies, I'm 99% sure you can send "bitstream" dolby digital or dts over the toslink (or coax) and the receiver will decode it for you. So you can have surround sound in this case.
3. I don't think PC games are set up to output a DD 5.1 bitstream over toslink. If that's true then you lose surround sound (for games) for this setup.
Right now I have a simple 2 channel amp on my PC. I decided I valued the better quality sound over having rear speakers. I'm not certain the loss of rear speakers is necessary but I don't see a solution in my case without using a bulky receiver. When streaming movies reach blu ray sound quality and I buy my palace in southern france, I may rethink my decision.
I'd like to correct you on a couple things.
1) Optical Toslink is limited in bandwidth due to the S/PDIF technology, which has the same effect on coaxial. ADAT Lightpipe is a different technology which still uses the TOSLINK connector, yet can carry 8 channels of uncompressed audio as opposed to S/PDIF's 2.
2) Your argument for more voltage to the OP amp is immediately invalidated by your argument for the batteries in the O2. The batteries provide a mere 9 volts while the wall provides 12.
2 - Just to clarify, most motherboards will only passthrough DD/DTS over optical
3 - more clarification, one of the few good features of a soundcard is they can compress DD/DTS on-the-fly for games, but most modern receivers are HDMI capable anyways
Thanks for clarifying. I've learned a lot from your posts over the last week.
Objective2 amp uses 2 9V batteries in series for 18V of power, as I wrote. Some Objective2 implementations use only a single 9V battery and a voltage doubling arrangement, which also works, but eats through batteries relatively fast. Some manufacturers use voltage doubling on a 12V PSU phase with sound cards, it's pretty standard practice in the sound cards that are sold through music stores. Voltage doubling sacrifices current for voltage. Most op-amp based circuits don't require a lot of current, but they need the voltage or they will clip, lose definition and lose dynamics. It's easy to calculate, the spec sheets of most op-amps are on the internet, most common op-amps will require about 15V in order to prevent clipping/distortion/compression. Asus uses voltage doubling on it's 5 V powered audio solutions, which amounts to 10 V, still worse than the 12V they use in their internal products. Pro grade sound cards will use 12V from the PSU, filter and insulate it, and step it up to 20-24 V, so that the op-amp based circuit can work on spec.
Lightpipe is for trackers (harddisk recorders), not for audio. There is high speed TOSLINK, it just requires more expensive parts than are generally used in consumer grade products. I use a high speed TOSLINK connected DAC myself, it's about double the bandwidth of a standard S/P-DIF, it's made for 2-channel uncompressed 36-bit 192 KHz, but it's not lightpipe. The standard linux computer systems in cars these days use optical data transfer with a higher bandwidth than consumer grade S/P-DIF, even with cheap parts, the optical link in consumer grade audio gear just sucks for so many reasons, but it's not that important, because as long as the distance is not too long, a coax cable can bypass that problem. It would actually make sense to transport an analogue audio signal optically. That trick has been used for decades to clean up a signal through opto-couplers, which cut the galvanic link between audio circuits and replace it with an optical link, which filters out ground noise and noise artefacts that would travel through a galvanic connection.