Discrete Sound Cards; Is there really a difference? - Page 5

Well, things are more complicated than they appear: http://www.6moons.com/audioreviews/resonessence/2.html

I can certainly confirm that the stepped attenuator of the Eximus DP1 sounds far more dynamic than 64bit float attenuation on the computer....it instantly struck me, and I've also tried to either leave it at 5% w/ 100% off the computer, or leave it at 100%(which bypasses it from what the user manual says) and use the 64fp attenuation of foobar and uLilith at 10/15%, it's a blood bath tbh.

Quote:

Originally Posted by leeperry 

Well, things are more complicated than they appear: http://www.6moons.com/audioreviews/resonessence/2.html

 

I can certainly confirm that the stepped attenuator of the Eximus DP1 sounds far more dynamic than 64bit float attenuation on the computer....it instantly struck me, and I've also tried to either leave it at 5% w/ 100% off the computer, or leave it at 100%(which bypasses it from what the user manual says) and use the 64fp attenuation of foobar and uLilith at 10/15%, it's a blood bath tbh.

You will note that in the review of the Invicta DAC that they used a digital volume instead of analog as they determined the slight advantages of signal to noise ratio were not worth loosing the advantages the digital volume control in spite of analog controls slight but obvious advantage in signal to noise. There was no real loss of S/N ratio with their system till -40db & then it was only slight with thier implimentation. You are not likely to listen to music with the volume below -40db as it would not work with most systems. Sound would be too soft for good listening.

Stepped attenuators are not really the cat's meow either as unless you pay alot of money you get too few volume choices to make them usefull. I  know this because I've been there, done that.

With the computer I have with the Essense STX card the performance is similar to the Invicta due to the ability of Windows Seven to convert the signal depth of CD audio from 16bit to 24 bit output & the S/N ratio is within a hairs bredth of of the Invicta's out the RCA jacks so I'm not really losing anything significant by using the digital volume control.
 

http://www.6moons.com/audioreviews/centrance/2.html

Another company saying that analog is better....I'm not sure how audiophile these two companies could be considered when one is using OPA1612 for an output stage and the other AD797, but still they completely disagree. OTOH, Centrance also like to completely contradict WaveLength on the isochronous/async USB matter

I would guess that at some point the waveform will be so small that there simply won't be enough "headroom" to keep the full dynamics.

The headamp gain of the DP1 is so high that I can hardly go above 9 O'clock on my 50Ω/89dB T50RP, so that would very much apply as lower then -40dB attenuation I think. At max volume, it would blow my phone I think ^^

Quote:

Originally Posted by holden4th 

My PC came equipped with a Realtek HD sound chip as standard. However, running a direct digital stream straight into a DAC/Amp combo made a huge difference in SQ. The combo cost me $250 (this puts it on the budget end of the market) and I consider it money well spent.

Hi. May I know if there is a difference between getting a digital signal from the MB or from a soundcard. Theoretically, does MB noise come into play in this instance? I am setting up a digital signal to DACnAMP as well and am comtemplating to skip the soundcard to save some dough. Thanks!!!

Don't get a sound card just to transfer a digital signal. Digital audio is just ones and zeroes with a specific time interval in between. There may be slight errors in the time domain (jitter), but a sound card won't help much or at all with that, and it's the DAC's job to account for it anyway. There's no proof to my knowledge that a reasonable amount of jitter is audible at all (reasonable being what you'll get from a source that's not faulty).

Quote:

Originally Posted by Head Injury 

Don't get a sound card just to transfer a digital signal. Digital audio is just ones and zeroes with a specific time interval in between. There may be slight errors in the time domain (jitter), but a sound card won't help much or at all with that, and it's the DAC's job to account for it anyway. There's no proof to my knowledge that a reasonable amount of jitter is audible at all (reasonable being what you'll get from a source that's not faulty).

Thanks very much for the explanation Head Injury!

There's only one reason to get a sound card for outputting S/PDIF, and that's to use the sound card's DSP effects that may not be available with an integrated sound codec. Most of those are gaming features you may not care about.

Originally Posted by Head Injury 

Digital audio is just ones and zeroes

Beautiful troll bait, keep up the good work

To those who are not into fairy tales, here's a good link(kindly provided by Currawong): http://lampizator.eu/LAMPIZATOR/TRANSPORT/CD_transport_DIY.html

Quote:

Originally Posted by leeperry 

Beautiful troll bait, keep up the good work

 

To those who are not into fairy tales, here's a good link(kindly provided by Currawong): http://lampizator.eu/LAMPIZATOR/TRANSPORT/CD_transport_DIY.html

Beautiful incomplete quotation. Maybe you should read posts, rather than cherry pick them for key phrases.

Quote:

Originally Posted by NamelessPFG 

There's only one reason to get a sound card for outputting S/PDIF, and that's to use the sound card's DSP effects that may not be available with an integrated sound codec. Most of those are gaming features you may not care about.

Thanks for the confirmation Nameless! You are so right.  A little too advanced in age for games so will stick to just 2 channel music. Sound card savings can get me a couple more CDs! :)

Quote:

Originally Posted by Head Injury 

Don't get a sound card just to transfer a digital signal. Digital audio is just ones and zeroes with a specific time interval in between. There may be slight errors in the time domain (jitter), but a sound card won't help much or at all with that, and it's the DAC's job to account for it anyway. There's no proof to my knowledge that a reasonable amount of jitter is audible at all (reasonable being what you'll get from a source that's not faulty).

Agreed that sound cards won't help much, because they're typically in a noisy environment, clocks are lousy, ton of RFI noise. They aren't even meant to be used as transports, so there.

DACs typically use a phased-lock loop to try and clean up the incoming jittery source. No PLL can do a perfect job. So the lower jitter signal you feed the DAC, the better.

Believe it or not, most consumer gear has extremely high jitter.

http://www.stereophile.com/content/wadia-digital-170itransport-digital-ipod-dock-john-atkinson-june-2009

"The lowest jitter I measured from the Wadia was 3.124 nanoseconds when I looked at the spectrum of the jitter from 50Hz to 100kHz; the highest was 7ns, which was when I examined the datastream's eye pattern (see May 2009, p.98)."

NANO seconds.. that's really high jitter. Most of the good usb->spdif converters like those from wavelength and ART measure < 10 PICOseconds

Quote:

Originally Posted by sorue 

Agreed that sound cards won't help much, because they're typically in a noisy environment, clocks are lousy, ton of RFI noise. They aren't even meant to be used as transports, so there.

 

DACs typically use a phased-lock loop to try and clean up the incoming jittery source. No PLL can do a perfect job. So the lower jitter signal you feed the DAC, the better.

 

Believe it or not, most consumer gear has extremely high jitter.

http://www.stereophile.com/content/wadia-digital-170itransport-digital-ipod-dock-john-atkinson-june-2009

"The lowest jitter I measured from the Wadia was 3.124 nanoseconds when I looked at the spectrum of the jitter from 50Hz to 100kHz; the highest was 7ns, which was when I examined the datastream's eye pattern (see May 2009, p.98)."

 

NANO seconds.. that's really high jitter. Most of the good usb->spdif converters like those from wavelength and ART measure < 10 PICOseconds

You're making some bold blanket statements about sound cards here.

I'd like some data about how audible 3 ns of jitter is, please. As well as the measured effects at the other end of a DAC. As well as other examples, to defend your claim that "most" consumer gear is comparably bad.

Under 10 ps of jitter? It really depends on how you measure jitter, on practice, every methods gives us different results that cannot be compared.

So comparison is only possible between the results of a same method, for example, I seem to remember that stereophile never measured anything under 50 ps and 100 ps was considered excellent.

The famous AES paper on the audibility of jitter:

http://www.nanophon.com/audio/jitter92.pdf

"At 20kHz the peak to peak sampling jitter must be less than 20ps, increasing at 6dB per octave for lower frequencies until approximately 500 Hz where the limit is 1 ns. Below 200 Hz, the jitter may up to 500 ns in amplitude before the sidebands could become audible.

For oversampled systems the sampling jitter sensitivity may be worse. As the sampled signal could have a higher frequency than the Nyquist worst case of 24 kHz the sensitivity increases further. For a delta-sigma DAC any jitter at 150 kHz, for example, may modulate with the shaped modulator noise at around that frequency creating modulation products falling in the most critical parts of the audio spectrum"

Many DACs oversample and a large majority are delta-sigma. If you look at how OS and delta-sigma work, it's no surprise that they're more susceptible to jitter. So that 20 ps number.. it's actually a conservative number.

This is probably one of the most technical and informative posts about jitter by an RF engineer with years of experience working with spdif (and jitter):

http://www.audiocircle.com/index.php?topic=90220.0

Yes there's a difference, but its up to your gear and ears. Since not every one ears are the same. Some might be able to hear the difference while others might not be able to at all.  Me on the other hand can hear  the difference very  easy, even with non High end headphones.  Tho When I have to use onboard audio, I cant stand to even listen to it because I can hear how bad it sounds. To the point of either not using sound at all or going and find a old sound card from a family house rather it be usb or a old Audigy 2.

I only been cheated once and that was a long long time ago and that was with Razer Barracuda HP1 and Razer Barracuda AC1, Now the sound card was fine but the Headset and Razer driver support for it wasn't. Tho I was able to sell those two off. Tho if it wasn't for that I wouldn't took a step into owning HI-fi headphones.