Looking for a Sound Card to fix 2 issues

[Dinzy]

I have a first gen i7 rig I am using as a HTPC/gaming machine. I use onboard audio output through the HDMI on Radeon for sound and video and feed that through my receiver and then into the TV. I have noticed a few audio glitches that could be coming from the sound. It's a mild crackle, that is periodic and seems to be confined to SD videos. This could be a driver or XBMC issue.

The second issue is far more annoying. If I let my unit go to sleep or hibernate it often recovers with the video drivers thinking that I am using an HDMI to DVDI adaptor and so the card refuses to pass the audio through. Rebooting fixes this, but is annoying.

I am thinking of purchasing this: ASUS Xonar DSX 7.1 and using optical out. I have a 7.1 capable receiver but I am only running 5.1. Do I even need it to be 7.1 for the optical out?

Anyways the real questions I have is how should I install it? I have 2 PCIE 1x but one is not usable to to a heatsink on the mobo and I have a PCIE tuner card and then this sound card and a HD 695/70. THe board has 2x PCIe 16 slots. I do not use the tuner much at all so I was thinking of moving that to the other slot and then putting the soundcard all alone in the PCIE 1x slot.

 

[Knufire]

Optical out is a digital signal, i.e. raw data. Your receiver would be the one actually decoding it into a analog signal. Do you have any PCI slots available?

 

[Dakyris]

You can simply configure the sound card to send 5.1 instead of 7.1. The "7.1" in the description is really only the upper limit of what it can do, not an indication that it can't do 2.1/5.1.

 

[Dinzy]

Optical out is a digital signal, i.e. raw data. Your receiver would be the one actually decoding it into a analog signal. Do you have any PCI slots available?

I have a ton of PCI slots because it is a 3.7 year old motherboard, but I was thinking that this card would need be available for then next build. I am not sure that they will still be offering boards with a PCI slot at that point. But then again they will have optical on the board.

 

[Dinzy]

You can simply configure the sound card to send 5.1 instead of 7.1. The "7.1" in the description is really only the upper limit of what it can do, not an indication that it can't do 2.1/5.1.

I was thinking I wanted 7.1 in the case that I buy 2 more speakers at some point in the future.