[mythtv-users] "Do you really need a discrete audio card ?"

[Steven Adeff]

On Mon, Nov 22, 2010 at 5:40 PM, Andrew Close <aclose at gmail.com> wrote:
> On Mon, Nov 22, 2010 at 3:41 PM, Christopher X. Candreva
> <chris at westnet.com> wrote:
>>
>> Tech Report has release an interesting review, comparing the Asus Xonar
>> cards to the common built-in Realtek chips, with the low-end ($29) Xonar
>> comming out as a worthwhile upgrade.
>>
>> Aside from the article being interesting, it made me wondering if switching
>> audio cards would help with the "WriteAudio: buffer underrun" problems I
>> have with untranscoded content, which hasn't gone away with 0.24
>
>
> Chris,
>
> do you have a link?  did they mention anything regarding pass-through
> to an amp/receiver?  i would assume that the cheaper option wouldn't
> matter if it was able to do pass-through.
>
> thanks!

back in the day, better chips required less CPU time, especially for
doing surround sound in games, where they would offload this
processing from the CPU, so for games it may make a difference.

As far as audio quality, I think it's foolish to both use the analog
output from a computer and to pay extra for cards with slightly better
analog output. Your money is better spend on an external DAC, whether
your connection choice be USB, SPDIF or HDMI/DisplayPort.

-- 
Steve
http://www.mythtv.org/wiki/User:Steveadeff
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