HTPC Sound upgrade

Panneskjegg · Aug 17, 2011

Greetings!

I got an old HT-PC that I have been using for some years now. I use the built in soundcard on the motherboard (Abit IP35-Pro), and use a toslink between the PC and the receiver (Yamaha RXV-1800).

I listen to music on Spotify a lot (320kb), flac, and I watch many series/movies on the PC (Dolby Digital / DTS).

If I wanted to upgrade the sound quite a bit.. do I have to choose one of the following paths ?

1. Stereo sound: Get a DAC ?
2. Movies: Get a new Soundcard ?

Or is there a third path that would give me an upgrade overall (Movies & Music) ?

Any tips/advice is welcome (Both cheap & expensive)!

FYI: I got a decent surround/sound system:

Yamaha RXv1800 receiver
Emotiva XPA-3 (3x200w) to drive fronts/center (Klipsch RC-7, Klipsch RB81-IIs as front, Klipsch RS35 for surrounds)
Behringer EP2500 (2x600w) for some midbasses I use (JBL 2226H)
Crown CE4000 (2x1200w) for my subwoofers
Behringer DCX2496 to take care of Xovers / SS Filter etc.

- The point is: I should be able to experience an upgrade SQ wise with my gear (as in: No crappy pc speakers)

glorp · Aug 17, 2011

Will your Abit board handle an ATI 5570 or equivalent 2xx series NVIDIA gfx card? One of those with an HDMI port will let you bitstream pretty much any audio format you might use now plus all the HD audio formats like those in blu-rays directly to the receiver for decoding. Cost: $50 (+ maybe a new cable).

Panneskjegg · Aug 18, 2011

glorp said:
Will your Abit board handle an ATI 5570 or equivalent 2xx series NVIDIA gfx card? One of those with an HDMI port will let you bitstream pretty much any audio format you might use now plus all the HD audio formats like those in blu-rays directly to the receiver for decoding. Cost: $50 (+ maybe a new cable).

Since im already bitstreaming, I guess there will not be any upgrade soundwise for me, even when buying a new soundcard ?

I don't have many movies on my PC with DTS HD Master / HD DD, so I really don't need to be able to bitstream that. I use my standalone bluray player for DTS HD Master / DD HD movies etc.

Theocnoob · Aug 18, 2011

My understanding is that depending on how new the standard is and what the sound chipset is capable of, there is a varying level of quality even with digital. For example, older digital out can't (apparently) fully output Bluray quality audio while newer HDMI outs can. Not 100% sure on that. A high quality external amp/receiver used as your DAC is always better than a soundcard, if you have one.

glorp · Aug 18, 2011

Panneskjegg said:
Since im already bitstreaming, I guess there will not be any upgrade soundwise for me, even when buying a new soundcard ?

I don't have many movies on my PC with DTS HD Master / HD DD, so I really don't need to be able to bitstream that. I use my standalone bluray player for DTS HD Master / DD HD movies etc.

The only thing you bitstream now is Dolby & DTS 5.1 and PCM 2.0. That's because that's all optical TOSLink has the bandwidth for. Standard Dolby & DTS core are compressed, lossy audio formats.

Add an HDMI interface and you will be able to bitstream DTS-HD MA (and all it's variants) 5.1/7.1, TrueHD 5.1/7.1, and 5.1/7.1 PCM. All these are either uncompressed or lossless audio formats. The HDMI will give you "better" audio quality in the sense that you can bitstream full HD formats like those found on blu-ray.

If you don't need that and you bitstream most audio now then TOSLink from your board's audio chip is just fine. It's all digital audio, so bitstreaming essentially means you are sending the raw audio information over to your receiver for decoding. No quality change can occur since it's just a stream of digital numbers. So, no, a change of sound card won't make any difference as long as you bitstream. The reason to add an HDMI interface is so that you *can* get and use movies with DTS-HD MA/TrueHD. Then you would have better quality audio. As long as you use a stand-alone for blu-rays you don't really need that either.

Panneskjegg · Aug 18, 2011

glorp said:
The only thing you bitstream now is Dolby & DTS 5.1 and PCM 2.0. That's because that's all optical TOSLink has the bandwidth for. Standard Dolby & DTS core are compressed, lossy audio formats.

Add an HDMI interface and you will be able to bitstream DTS-HD MA (and all it's variants) 5.1/7.1, TrueHD 5.1/7.1, and 5.1/7.1 PCM. All these are either uncompressed or lossless audio formats. The HDMI will give you "better" audio quality in the sense that you can bitstream full HD formats like those found on blu-ray.

If you don't need that and you bitstream most audio now then TOSLink from your board's audio chip is just fine. It's all digital audio, so bitstreaming essentially means you are sending the raw audio information over to your receiver for decoding. No quality change can occur since it's just a stream of digital numbers. So, no, a change of sound card won't make any difference as long as you bitstream. The reason to add an HDMI interface is so that you *can* get and use movies with DTS-HD MA/TrueHD. Then you would have better quality audio. As long as you use a stand-alone for blu-rays you don't really need that either.

Thanks for a good explanation.

I'll just stick to what I already use then... and maybe add a laptop that have HDMI Out, so I can bitstream lossless formats on a later occasion.

Cheers!

HTPC Sound upgrade

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