Year 2012. Soundcard with best spdif and optical out (192kHz?)

Why do you need 192k out? 

Anyways, most of the Sound Blaster cards will do 192k D/A for stereo output (at least as far back as Audigy 2 ZS). Don't remember if they'll do 192k out via S/PDIF or not (or which ones, if there's limits) - it's a useless feature for me. I think the M-Audio A192 can do 192k via S/PDIF. Not sure how available they still are - you can get them direct for $200 SRP though.

http://www.m-audio.com/products/en_us/Audiophile192.html

The Audiophileo will do 24/192 as well, pretty sure it's limited to stereo (pretty sure the M-Audio card is limited to stereo as well) - the only stuff that I know that will handle 24/192 in multi-channel is from Digidesign. 

If you just want a "digital transport" device, the Audiophileo can accomplish this. I wouldn't spend the extra money for that over a soundcard that can do the same thing though. Did a bit of reading since the last post, A192 can indeed accomplish this, and there should be other cards capable of it - they should all be transparent as transports (well, even as decoders, to get into it). I'm assuming you have an outboard DtoA that can take the 192k signal in - otherwise the A192 still has you covered with analog outputs.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Jon L 

 

I actually have some native 192kHz and 176.4kHz music files and hope to expand the collection in the future.  

I only need digital output and don't need analogue output, and to add one more thing, the spdif and toslink output sound quality needs to outperform SQ of something like M2Tech asynchronous USB, which I already have and currently outperform with my Lynx 2B (modded) spdif output.  

M-Audio Revolution 5.1 has good SPDIF coax output at 192kHz. Very similar to AP192 except no SPDIF input, uses VIA Envy24 GT codec. Driver has ASIO support. They are out of production for years, but NOS sells for about $50 USD.

I have an ASUS Xonar Essence ST that has a digital S/PDIF output that supports 24-bit/192KHz output.

Not sure what you're asking for exactly, though - from what I can tell, the LynxTWO supports 192KHz output as well? I must be missing something somewhere... s'wot I get for still being pretty new to audio.

-- Griffinhart

With the RCA combo jacks (there's a few Auzen cards that do this as well) you usually get an adapter included - if such an adapter isn't, it's a Mini-TOS plug. What do you mean by "how is the sound quality" - I'm not following you...

I don't know about the 88.2/176.4 support for Xonar; can tell you A192 does...
 

Quote:

Originally Posted by Jon L 

Xonar Essence does NOT support 88.2 or 176.4 kHz, correct?  It will play them, but at resampled rates.  Xonar also has coax/toslink combo jack; how is the toslink sound quality (what adapter/cable do you need?).  

 

Lynx 2B can play up to 192kHz via its analogue outputs but spdif is limited to 96kHz.  Lynx other cards like AES can output 192 kHz. 

 

Quote:

Originally Posted by Jon L 

Xonar Essence does NOT support 88.2 or 176.4 kHz, correct?  It will play them, but at resampled rates.  Xonar also has coax/toslink combo jack; how is the toslink sound quality (what adapter/cable do you need?).  

 

Lynx 2B can play up to 192kHz via its analogue outputs but spdif is limited to 96kHz.  Lynx other cards like AES can output 192 kHz. 

 

>NOT support 88.2 or 176.4 KHz

Correct. 44.1, 48, 96, 192.

>toslink sound quality

I don't really have any sort of metric to test against, so I can't say. I'm running the Xonar's optical output into my Yulong D100 and listening from there (either by RCA line-out into my Creative Gigaworks T40 Series II speakers, or by XLR line-out into my Practical Devices XM6, or from the headphone outputs on the D100 itself).

>adapter/cable

None; the Xonar comes with a little plug bit that jacks into the coax port that makes it compatible with TOSlink jacks. You can use any TOSlink cable you like; as long as your Xonar has the little plug bit, you're good to go.

(In the last picture, it's the left-most center cable. TOSlink/coax out, line-in, headphone-in, RCA out.)

-- Griffinhart

For reference, that little adapter is "TOS to Mini-TOS" - you can buy cables terminated like that:

I'm only pointing this out because those adapters are incredibly easy to lose if you ever have to remove them.

Ah, didn't know that mini-TOS was a thing. Cool.

-- Griffinhart