Shall I buy a soundcard..

[Burly]

At the minute I'm using onboard sound from my Asus P5K-VM via optical out. This is going to a £200 Yamaha 5.1 set (AV receiver). Will I notice better audio if I were to say use the cheapest Asus card?

Also a thing that is annoying with the onboard is it doesnt seem to output dolby 5.1/dts and is stuck on 2 channels. Thought it was a driver issue but I cant find any setting to adjust.

 

[DanSolo]

If it doesnt sound better il eat my d2x

 

[Burly]

Easily noticable?

 

[Jimbo Mahoney]

Also a thing that is annoying with the onboard is it doesnt seem to output dolby 5.1/dts and is stuck on 2 channels. Thought it was a driver issue but I cant find any setting to adjust.

I think that's normal, sadly.

I think you'd need to get a soundcard that specifically support Dolby / 5.1 / whatever as digital out.

 

[toucam]

I believe with onboard optical you will only get 5.1 from DVDs as the tracks have already been processed, even the X-Fi range has the same limitation (not sure about the Elite Pro), anything else you will need a card which supports decoding on the fly like DD Live or DTS. There're a few cards can do this, Auzentech X-Fi, Asus Xonar D2/D2X, just bought myself a D2X

 

[jack.mitchell]

Wait,

Optical out is digital yes? It goes straight to your reciever (the yammy), this then interprets the digital signal and converts it to analog to play out of your speakers.

A new soundscard will not make a difference if you continue to use a digital line out with you new card. If you use analog then it will depend if your amp is better at decoding that you soundcard.

The 5.1 issue, make sure that you are outputting full digital. If you are using vlc, your audio out should be set to the SPDIF option, then your amp will decode the digital Dolby signal if it has the capabilties. Being a yammy they put a lot of money into advancing decoders within thier amps so I assume it will support most formats.

 

[Monkeynut]

There was an app that encoded on the fly to DD 5.1 but for the life of me I can't remember it's name.

 

[Burly]

Wait,

Optical out is digital yes? It goes straight to your reciever (the yammy), this then interprets the digital signal and converts it to analog to play out of your speakers.

A new soundscard will not make a difference if you continue to use a digital line out with you new card. If you use analog then it will depend if your amp is better at decoding that you soundcard.

The 5.1 issue, make sure that you are outputting full digital. If you are using vlc, your audio out should be set to the SPDIF option, then your amp will decode the digital Dolby signal if it has the capabilties. Being a yammy they put a lot of money into advancing decoders within thier amps so I assume it will support most formats.

In VLC I see "Use S/PDIF when available" under Audio - this correct?
Thanks for your post. Are you sure of this though?

 

[jack.mitchell]

Yeah, check that box and then if your video is encoded in surround sound, assuming your reciever has the decoding capabilities it should output the right format. There is also usually some checkbox of sorts in your audio settings which syas something like: digitalise output or something along those lines, this will also bypass the chip and send a pure digital signal stright to your amp, eliminating the soundcard processing.

 

[DanSolo]

Easily noticable?

A very noticable difference. I know people say this all the time, but i have heard bits of songs i never have done before. Well worth the money.