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DIY Dedicated SPDIF PCI Card Request

post #1 of 10
2/18/10 at 9:55pm
Thread Starter 
What does it take to design a dedicated bit perfect SPDIF PCI card? Seems like this should have been done by now. Would it cost more that a good sound card without any improvement?
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post #2 of 10
2/19/10 at 1:11am
google(zefiro acoustics). might have to use wayback machine.

been there, done that (greg, from zefiro, that is). he did his own isa card and then I think a pci one, as well.

this was back when win95 was still new, though

these days, spdif is easily done via usb. no need for card-space anymore. spdif is 'easy' and not worth a pci card (imho).
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post #3 of 10
2/20/10 at 10:55am
Thread Starter 
Thanks for the tip, linuxworks. Wayback machine was right! I found references to a soundcard, looked like ISA.

I see people looking for sound cards quite often only to use the SPDIF output to send the signal to a DAC. I'm somewhat surprised that a dedicated card is not available, or a homebuilt version hasn't surfaced.

I think the lack of responses to this topic should be telling me that I'm focusing on the wrong area of my setup.
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post #4 of 10
2/20/10 at 12:07pm
the world has changed, what can I say?

back in windows 3.1 days, it was 'hard' to do midi. then in windows 95 days it was 'hard' to do audio. that was still isa-bus days.

win98 started to clean things up and xp sp2 finally got audio really working.

and now, usb-audio does the trick instead of needing a pci (or, shudder, pci-e) card.
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post #5 of 10
2/25/10 at 5:20pm
Quote:
Originally Posted by linuxworks View Post
the world has changed, what can I say?

back in windows 3.1 days, it was 'hard' to do midi. then in windows 95 days it was 'hard' to do audio. that was still isa-bus days.
child's play compared to trying to play 8 tracks through my z-80 based kaypro 4!
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post #6 of 10
2/25/10 at 6:19pm
Quote:
Originally Posted by Denim View Post
What does it take to design a dedicated bit perfect SPDIF PCI card?
Card? How about mother board?

Intel DG45FC, DG45ID, DP55WG, DH57JG to name a few.

All recent Apples have a mini-toslink input and output. Mac mini makes a good media server.
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post #7 of 10
2/25/10 at 9:31pm
Get a Squeezebox. Sounds way cleaner than my x-fi's spdif.
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post #8 of 10
2/26/10 at 12:46am
Quote:
Originally Posted by Denim View Post
I see people looking for sound cards quite often only to use the SPDIF output to send the signal to a DAC. I'm somewhat surprised that a dedicated card is not available, or a homebuilt version hasn't surfaced.
homebuilt drivers have: cmediadrivers

bitmatched/bitperfect DS/KS/WASAPI/WaveRT 44.1/48/88.2/96kHz S/PDIF on $10 soundcards.
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post #9 of 10
2/27/10 at 12:33pm
Thread Starter 
leeperry, I believe you nailed it! Great timing too. I'm traveling west on Monday. A trip to Fry's with the hardware requirements will be a major priority.

Thanks!
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post #10 of 10
2/27/10 at 5:20pm
np
anyway, software drivers is the Achilles' heel of all modern soundcards...they pretty much all do it wrong in one way or another(except for the M2Tech Hiface that seems close to perfect, apart for the high price and the random BSOD's reported)...this guy does it all well from A to Z...rocket science huh
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