[mythtv-users] Audigy Sound Card Upgrade Worthwhile?

Calin Brabandt cbrabandt at yahoo.com
Thu Jun 21 17:25:01 UTC 2007


"Steven Adeff" <adeffs.mythtv at gmail.com> wrote:

> The nForce2 chipset has a superior audio system to 
> the Audigy (as do the ALC chips) because they don't
> convert  digital to analog for processing and then
> *back* to digital for S/PDIF like ALL the Creative
> sound cards do. This doesn't affect AC3 or DTS, but
it > does affect allnon AC3/DTS audio.

I've never run Audigy soundcards under Linux but I
have not found this to be the case with the KX drivers
under Windows.  If this is the case with Linux, which
I doubt, it's a driver problem or, more likely, a
setup problem.  I think even the Creative Labs Audigy
drivers are capable of bit-perfect SPDIF capture, if
the mixer sliders are set to maximum and other
SPDIF/Dolby settings are correctly configured.

I've accomplished bit-perfect recordings on several
Audigy cards using KX.  One test involved playing an
AC3 sample out the Audigy SPDIF port and looping it
back to the SPDIF input for capture.  I compared the
captured file compared against the original and it
matched perfectly.

A have also captured DTS and AC3 streams from my set
top DVD SPDIF output (yes--KX ignores SCMS and allows
this :)).  I compared the captured files to the files
ripped from the DVD.  Again--bit perfect copies were
recorded.

For the money, I've been very impressed with the
Audigy hardware.  On the other hand, the VRD on my
nForce2 Abit mobo couples an irritating whine to ALL
analog audio, regardless of which power supply I use. 
It's most irritating at the highest 200/400MHz FSB
speed and a Barton CPU.

To get a feel of what the Audigy hardware is capable
of doing, I suggest the KX Project forums:

http://kxproject.lugosoft.com/

Unfortunately, KX is a Windows project and it's not
even open source, but you can learn a lot there.

-Cal




       
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