i was wondering
im looking for some information that i can use when choosing a motherboard and making a final decision on my set up?

ive been reading about realtek audio.
for the past two motherboards ive used their onboard sound and ive had only positive experiences. but this is for the past 5 years at least.
i just got a new monitor that has an HDMI plug in.
and hoping to switch over

Im hoping some of you can shed some light this way. i got my sights on a few pieces of hardware:

Auzentech
Xonar
Radeon 5xxx

realtek:
1200
889
889a

im really hoping for some guidance when it comes to hooking everything up
thank you
im not exactly sure if anyone can understand this post but please bear with me!

What kind of audio system do you have? Are you gonna use analog or digital out of the soundcard? The realtek will be sufficient when you use digital out, but analog is not great on any onboard soundcard. So for analog you should probably go for the sonar.

btw what are your plans with the soundcard anyway? Just listen to music? Or play games, make music, record, DJ or...?

well if its okay with readers of this post, i gotta split this up i think.

the rig is going to be used for
higher end gaming,
movies, (blu-ray)
and possibly lossless flac playback (curently have 200 gigs of mp3's)
i haven't bought/put together the system. i just wanna know what to throw together.
i posted a thread on mid level 7.1 systems to take advantage of the hardware im going to be using.

when should i use analog and when should i use digital playback?

also

i read that its easier to use the realtek ati driver?
why is that?

thank you!

While HDMI can carry audio information too, you use it from the video card to the monitor.

The few HDMI sound cards out there send the same info as SPDIF would send to your A/V Receiver.

The only video card maker that supports HDMI output with audio included is AMD with its newer 4000 and 5000 series. With one of those cards you run the HDMI output from the Video card to the A/V Receiver then from there you run HDMI to your monitor. It works and at least with my receiver I get on-screen menus too. I quit doing this because there is no improvement in quality and my receiver is using the older 1.2 version of HDMI that has some issues. Get one that supports HDMI v. 1.3a at least even though 1.4 is the current version.

The way I do my home theater is run SPDIF sound out of my on-board audio into my receiver, and DVI out from my video card to the monitor. It is all digital, it is functionally the same as using HDMI and the same number of cables as if I had used HDMI, which is one of its big selling points, fewer cables.

HDMI is essentially SPDIF + DVI in a single cable.

awesome so that part is cleared!

so why is it pointed out that its "a good idea" to use the ATI fix from Radeon (as opposed to PCIe add-on cards)?
what are the differences?

thank you everyone!

Normal SPDIF can do DD, DTS, stereo PCM up to 96khz. While HDMI can also do multichannel PCM (up to 192khz?), DD trueHD and DTS-MA.

I'm not using my HDMI out because i don't have a receiver with HDMI, so i can't help with that, but it certainly sounds like a very good option. Finally multichannel digital audio without quality loss!

I'm not sure about games. I think most audio calculation is done by software (on vista) nowadays, so a soundcard with EAX would be useless.

what do u mean audio calculation? how should this affect my decision?

I mean the "calculation" of sound effects like echo in games. This can be done by the hardware of a (Creative EAX) soundcard which was often faster and better sounding. But i believe this more and more moved to software. Windows Vista played a role in this because direct access to a soundcard is not supported, so these hardware effects were harder to do.
I know that at first Creative did not support EAX in Windows Vista, but later they released some software (i think it's called Alchemy) to enable it, but it is not for free.

So...now that i think of it, nowadays there is some new solution to get sound effects in games, it's called OpenAl. You probably should try to find a card with support for that. How it bypassed the Windows Vista sound limitation is beyond me though.

so the setup to the left is doing the same thing as the right ur saying?
whats the difference between coaxial and optical?

Coaxial and Optical are called SPDIF. It can do less than HDMI. As i said: Normal SPDIF can only do DD, DTS and stereo PCM up to 96khz. While HDMI can also do multichannel PCM (up to 192khz?), DD trueHD and DTS-MA.

Multichannel PCM via HDMI sounds like a real good option for games, but i have no experience with HDMI myself (i have no HDMI receiver).

It's really not a good time to buy a Xonar HDAV or (even less, cause of price) an Auzen Home Theater HD. Pretty much their appeal has been bitstreaming of so-called HD lossless codecs (DTS-HD MA and TrueHD). They require specific programs (TotalMedia Theatre and PowerDVD 9, respectively), and for PDVD9 you need to pay extra, even.

The new Radeon 5000 series can also bitstream with PowerDVD 9 (with a patch due out before the end of the month, according to a Cyberlink rep), and they might also with TMT, so that's an advantage right there, they're not locked to only one player. Also, people at doom9 have been working on bitstreaming with HDMI devices (even the ATI 4000 series too) and they've made quite some progress.

Even more so, the case for bitstreaming the codecs instead of decoding on the PC gets weaker and weaker, when directshow decoders for TrueHD and DD+ are already available, and only DTS-HD is missing. Upcoming Slyplayer (free, but will require use of AnyDVD HD for bluray playing) will also either bitstream with Radeon cards, or decode into a WASAPI exclusive path.

So after all this, I think the smart thing to do for getting HDMI is to get a Radeon 5000 card. Cheaper ones are coming though, right now only the mid-high and high end are out. The 5600 series and lower are due soon.

I was reading the spec sheet on one of the newer Realteks (The OP is interested in a motherboard with this chip on it.) But I am not sure I am understanding them correctly.

some quotes:
"The ALC889 also features secondary SPDIF-OUT output and converter to transport digital audio output to a High Definition Media Interface (HDMI) transmitter."
"HDMI audio driver for AMD platform"
---

Am I reading this right that it will leverage an AMD video card with HDMI for the audio output? The motherboard this thing is on happens to be an AMD motherboard too, so I am a little confused. Anyone?

@zxzDarkCloudzxz: The difference between S/PDIF optical and coaxial is that the optical cable is a bit more delicate.

Creative provided all of its hardware acceleration and sound effects (EAX) through DirectSound. When Vista was released Microsoft decided to remove DirectSound support moving forward so Creative (and other sound companies) had to find another way to provide their extra features.



OpenAL is a new API that was written to allow users to use the fancy features of their soundcards (hardware acceleration, EAX, etc.) with older games and apps that used DirectSound. Alchemy is Creative Labs' program that, to provide a simplified explanation, maps DirectSound API calls to OpenAL allowing older games and apps that used DirectSound to work on Vista and Windows 7.

At one point Creative was providing Alchemy free to X-Fi users & charging a small fee for Audigy users. Creative has since changed that decision & now Alchemy is free for all X-Fi & Audigy owners.

Optical (TOSLINK) has the benefit of not being a culprit for ground loops, because there is no electrical connection between the input and output device.

It's also a shame that consumer audio products don't implement ADAT audio. Same physical connector as S/PDIF TOSLINK, but capable of 8 channels of 24bit PCM @ 48khz