I have the only Nforce2 board that uses Realtek's ALC658's "professional" codec. Big deal, right? It's not like nforce2 sound cards are better than audigy 2's.

But the question is about digital out. And this is my question, since digital is just 1's and 0's does the quality of the signal really get affected by the soundcard you use? Do people only buy Audigy 2's for the great analog output? Doesnt the 5.1 decoder for the speakers do all the decoding, not the soundcard?

I thought the soundcard acted as a "pass through" if you will, its like running a ide cable from your hard-disk or dvdrom to the decoder box. If it's like that then is there any point in buying an audigy2 over say a $5 optical out card off ebay?

Just a topic I would be interested in knowing about, and hasnt been brought up from my searches.

You are right in thinking so, a 1's a 1 and a 0's a 0, but some manufacturers manage to cripple even the digital interface. Famous examples are in Creative's Live series, some of the implementations insist on resampling everything, which does have an audible impact on sound.

In general, a $5 card will do equally well.

Most of the $$ go into the 3D (gaming) stuff, which just gets in the way for useage as audio recorder, and isn't useful anyway as the CPU can do the 3D positional stuff at a much lower pricetag.

So my soundstorm will do digital out perfecly fine right? I mean you wont hear the slightest difference between my intergrated audio and a 90 buck audigy in music/movies?

Just "making sure"

As a proud owner of dirt cheap soundcards myself, yeah, the quality of a budget card is the same when using the SPDIF interface.

well, both the integrated ac'97 audio and the audigy will both resample to 48khz on output, so yeh they'll sound the same.

does the soundstorm resample like the live? wasnt it 44 to 48 to 44 then out or something?

I dunno where I heard that.

I assume you own an Abit NF7S 2.0 like I do (nForce 2 Ultra 400 with Soundstorm certificate) ... I doubt that the AC97 digital out is bit-true since the codec resamples as far as I know.

There is a test sample around here (dial.wav) that can show you if there are any audible problems with your resampling.

EDIT ... of yourse, if your card does not resample and locks itself onto the sampling freq. being fed by the signal, you will not notice any difference (assuming there are no buggy drivers and proper connectors)

I have the AN7, like the NF7-S's younger brother, newer. But comes with Optical IN/OUT and a newer codec for soundstorm. The NF7-S uses the Realtek ALC650 and mine is the 1st mobo to use Realteks ALC658 except for nforce3 boards.

Reding this topic, makes me wonder, which are the good & cheap soundcards?, name a few.

Also, I would like to know if I could notice the difference between my SB Live! X-Gamer (be gentle ), and those cheaper soundcards when listenning to music?, I'm not into games at all, so it doesn't matter to me.

Hey, I've got the X-Gamer too, so I feel ya...

I dunno if you've ever heard of the KX Project, but if not, definitely give it a try. If nothing else, you can get rid of Creative's bloatware. More importantly, though, KX's have better sound quality (out of the rear-out, anyway), and are free. They work with any EMU10K1 or EMU10K2 based card. (Live!, Audigy, Audigy 2, and some others) I myself have BA 735 speakers, which hook up to the digital out on the sound card, so it doesn't really affect me for normal usage, but I use my Sennheiser HD 280's on the rear-out, and it's definitely less noisy (as in unwanted nose, not volume) than the front-out.

Anyway, as to your original question, I'm not really sure. Our other main computer has a basic Creative card, I think PCI 128 or something. I've always plugged into the speakers headphone out on the rare occasions I use that one for music, and the only difference I've heard is the sound seems a bit, well, odd, like someone put a compressor on or something. But that could also be the speakers.

(-:Stephonovich:-)

if digital out is just 1's and 0's. then if i bought a 5.1 decoder box, could I bypass my crappy soundstrom and have it output the 1's and 0's of the digital signal to the decoder and so instead of buying say a M-audio revo i buy a 100 buck decoder instead and have that do the decoding? is that a bad idea?

Should I buy a soundcard or should I let a 5.1 decoder do all the work and just have the optical out carry the signal to the decoder.

Am i missing something? will soundstorm screw up the digital signal out like a sblive would?

Nvidia MCP-T supports Dolby Digital out, so it should be possible to stream to an external DD-decoder.

Note that this doesn't guarantee bit-true transmission of all PCM signals. For example, recent Creative cards do support DD/DTS output, yet plain PCM doesn't come out bit-true with standard drivers.

A lot of stuff's been written about this in this forum. I've been in the discussions, but it's been a few months. So I can't remember the exact details. You might do a search for words like 'kernel streaming' and 'RME' or 'Marian'. These brands were certainly mentioned.

[edit]Well, I found some stuff for you: http://www.hydrogenaudio.org/forums/index....showtopic=11725 [/edit]