HDMI audio or SPDIF

[weakssauce]

do you prefer audio over HDMI or SPDIF?

 

[saturn]

SPDIF

 

[weakssauce]

any specific reason? lol

 

[Waza]

I don't think there is much of a difference really, unless you use toslink with SPDIF. Both connection types can carry uncompressed stereo signal and/or compressed surround.
HDMI has few advantages on the bitrate and can carry lossless surround if you are into movies and own a decent home theather system.

 

[weakssauce]

thanks man i guess ill stick with my toslink connection

 

[saturn]

almost nothing good uses hdmi other then tv's and home threader crap.

 

[Evilsizer]

it doesnt matter which one, it is still a digital signal.

 

[saturn]

it doesnt matter which one, it is still a digital signal.

ture. At the end of the day it's all 1 and 0. If it has uncompressed pcm then just get what works.

 

[NiHaoMike]

HDMI natively supports surround while S/PDIF must use compression for surround modes. Running HDMI through a receiver can add lag and may require the receiver to be on for the monitor to work. A good solution is to use a HDMI splitter. (That requires the receiver to be able to accept the same pixel clock as the monitor, so those running something higher than 1080p would be out of luck with older receivers.) You can also use another output on your GPU (may cause some GPUs to run hotter) or use the onboard HDMI for audio only.

In the end, while HDMI seems to be a great idea on paper (minus the DRM junk, that is) and is certainly very usable, I kind of wished they implemented the audio part as an extended version of S/PDIF so that a passive adapter can split the audio and video signals.

 

[weakssauce]

iv never experienced lag when running hdmi through the receiver... do you mean input lag for gaming?

and thanks for all that great info

 

[Evilsizer]

well depending on your setup, i mean how you have things routed and through how many devices. it is does happen to have the audio lag behind whats going on. if its a moves its like watching a kung fu movie subb'd to English.

 

[NiHaoMike]

iv never experienced lag when running hdmi through the receiver... do you mean input lag for gaming?

and thanks for all that great info

Some receivers do and others don't. It's actually the more expensive receivers that are more likely to have that issue.