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Why does analog sound better than optical/spdif from sound card to receiver?

post #1 of 2
12/20/10 at 6:08pm
Thread Starter 

I am getting some Beyerdynamic DT770 Pro 80's for Xmas and am trying to tweak my current equipment for them. I tried using Toslink from my Terratec Aureon Sky and SPDIF coaxial from my onboard Realtek ALC1200, as I thought that would get me the best sound quality. However, I am running it into a crappy KLH R5100 receiver. The sound quality is much better running analog 3.5mm to RCA.

 

Why? Is it because the DAC on the Terratec card is superior to the poor KLH receiver? I am using Foobar2000 with WASAPI and have all the DSP disabled. I think the KLH must have a crappy input for digital, as there is noise in the background that shouldn't be there. There is much less noise with analog. This has just been bothering me as I wanted to utilize the receiver for a while longer since I have my Mission Electronics monitors hooked up to it and its much easier to just plug the phones in there than at the back of PC.

 

Is there a technical explanation?

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post #2 of 2
12/20/10 at 6:53pm

I don't see how to debug someone else's system. There's just too many parameters, and I'd need to have exactly the same setup. But it could be the receiver, as you think, or it could be some kind of software issue. Historically WIndows sound has been complex. If you don't get it right, you can be going through multiple bitrate conversions and various DSP stages, each of which adds problems. Details depend upon OS and other software. Benchmark has a guide that might help, http://www.benchmarkmedia.com/wiki/index.php/Computer_Audio_Playback_-_Setup_Guide.

 

(I note that I do my audio on a Mac, which is why I can't be much direct help.)

 

Is there any chance that you can borrow a receiver or external DAC from someone? That could help check whether the problem is the receiver. Of course if it goes away you still don't know for sure that the receive is at fault. There could be some compatibility problem or a problem in setup of the receiver.

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