Coaxial Digital Soundcard?

[taylor]

Does anyone know of a soundcard that has good coaxial digital output? All I've seen are optical ones, and I was wondering if any coaxial ones exist. With the abundance of coaxial digital inputs on DACs (especially DIY ones) I would have expected coaxial ones to be far more prominent than they are now.

So, does anyone know of a sound card with Coax digital input or output? Does anyone know why there are few, if any, of them?

[Andrew_WOT]

Audigy 2NX has one.
But I guess you can always get TosLink to SPDIF converter.
Something like this
http://www.impactacoustics.com/produ...1007&sku=40019

[Iron_Dreamer]

Most M-Audio cards have coax digital output, as do all RME cards AFAIK.

However for the lowerest jitter/cleanest ground, you would want to use the optical output of the computer to a device like the Monarchy DIP, to the coax input of your DAC.

[lini]

taylor: You could also go for the Audiotrak Prodigy 7.1 or Prodigy 192. Looks like they even use a little transformer for decoupling...

Greetings from Hannover!

Manfred / lini

[taylor]

Do the optical>coaxial converters degrade sound, i.e. is an optical sound card > converter > dac better than coaxial sound card > dac? Seems silly that they don't bother adding in a coaxial output.

Are all digital outputs equal? i.e. will a really cheap card with a digital output sound the same as a $150 card's digital output?

[Iron_Dreamer]

No digital ouptus are not created equal, many cheap card resample the orginal signal, and more expensive card generally have less jitter, ie better sound.

I guess an optical->coax converted COULD degrade sound, if it is poorly designed, but one like the Monarchy DIP is actually designed to reduce jitter, and IMPROVE sound quality.

[taylor]

Are there driver solutions to improving the quality of digital outputs on cheap cards?

[Iron_Dreamer]

Not that I know of, the output can only be as good as the hardware on the card allows it to be. Cards like the RME, EMU, Lynx, etc simply have higher quality parts than lower-end cards, and have better quality output as a result.

[Glassman]

chaep card will always resample in hardware, you can help them by resampling with a lot better algorithms in your software player, however jitter level will be rather high.. I'm talking about all Creative cards, various cheapish cards build upon CMI or Crystal controllers (including TB Santa Cruz) and onboard souncards in general..

you need to look for VIA Envy series based cards, because they doesn't resample and all has pretty decent digital outputs implementer directly in their Envy controller, ie all has about the same digital output, quality wise..

if you need something special, ie with lower jitter, you need to look higher for E-MU 1212M, which has both coaxial and optical outputs btw.

Monarchy DIP can only improve the signal, don't be affraid, it's just re-clocking and buffering..

[taylor]

Thanks for the info.

Seems coaxial is far more common in the >$100 bracket. Heh, everything in the >$100 bracket has tons more versatility.