foaming at the ears
100+ Head-Fier
- Joined
- Oct 1, 2009
- Posts
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Hello everyone at Head-Fi. I've lurked for the past week or so rather obsessively as my dream headphone rig revealed itself to me, post by post and, regrettably, dollar by dollar. While these components themselves have nothing to do with the question to follow, they are:
PC FLAC (foobar2000 .9.6.9) --> PS Audio DLIII, Cullens Stage IV --> Woo 6SE --> Grado gs1000i
Before my question, some context: I own a HT Omega ClaroPlus PCI soundcard and use Windows 7. I plan to feed my system with the SPDIF coax out on the card. The drivers that I got for Windows 7 allows me to pick from a selection of SPDIF output modes including DTS, Dolby Digital Live (both of which I want to avoid), and simple Digital Audio XX KHz, from which I would pick 96 KHz.
Many sound cards are notorious for resampling the digital signal so that what ends up getting transmitting is not bit-perfect. From what I have found in my searches on the forums, it seems that cheap on-board solutions are capable of this but there isn't yet any documentation of whether the ClaroPlus's digital out is bit-perfect. Would using Wasapi force it to be bit-perfect?
The reason I ask is, of course, I would like a bit-perfect signal to be feeding my ideal DAC in the future. I'd like to know in advance if I need to ditch my current soundcard solution (whose analog out I am satisfied with for my Grado 225) for a cheaper one (or just use my onboard Gigabyte UD5 SPDIF out) to obtain the bit-perfect stream that I am looking for.
I am anticipating that because Claroplus is nothing more than a consumer soundcard that there is probably some resampling going on. If I decide to just keep the dang thing and use its digital output, would this resampling be detrimental? Any experiences? Usually the mention of the ClaroPlus doesn't get many responses, so I might be hitting a dead end here with what seems to be an unpopular card...
Any insight would be much appreciated!
PC FLAC (foobar2000 .9.6.9) --> PS Audio DLIII, Cullens Stage IV --> Woo 6SE --> Grado gs1000i
Before my question, some context: I own a HT Omega ClaroPlus PCI soundcard and use Windows 7. I plan to feed my system with the SPDIF coax out on the card. The drivers that I got for Windows 7 allows me to pick from a selection of SPDIF output modes including DTS, Dolby Digital Live (both of which I want to avoid), and simple Digital Audio XX KHz, from which I would pick 96 KHz.
Many sound cards are notorious for resampling the digital signal so that what ends up getting transmitting is not bit-perfect. From what I have found in my searches on the forums, it seems that cheap on-board solutions are capable of this but there isn't yet any documentation of whether the ClaroPlus's digital out is bit-perfect. Would using Wasapi force it to be bit-perfect?
The reason I ask is, of course, I would like a bit-perfect signal to be feeding my ideal DAC in the future. I'd like to know in advance if I need to ditch my current soundcard solution (whose analog out I am satisfied with for my Grado 225) for a cheaper one (or just use my onboard Gigabyte UD5 SPDIF out) to obtain the bit-perfect stream that I am looking for.
I am anticipating that because Claroplus is nothing more than a consumer soundcard that there is probably some resampling going on. If I decide to just keep the dang thing and use its digital output, would this resampling be detrimental? Any experiences? Usually the mention of the ClaroPlus doesn't get many responses, so I might be hitting a dead end here with what seems to be an unpopular card...
Any insight would be much appreciated!
