MisterGentleman
New Head-Fier
- Joined
- Jul 2, 2007
- Posts
- 1
- Likes
- 0
I’m after a bit of advice about improving my sound quality when watching movies. I use a Stax 4040 Signature system which I previously connected straight into Pioneer Elite 59avi DVD player. I was very happy with the audio quality that this setup gave me without the need for any detailed configuration.
Recently I switched from using the Pioneer Elite 59avi to a HTPC but have found the audio quality to be considerably lower. Also, it seems there is a lot of tweaking that needs doing and I can’t get surround sound tracks to sound remotely decent when listening through my Stax (all the balance is wrong). With 59avi I just plugged the driver unit into the player and it sounded great with no tweaking required.
I want to go back to a plug and play setup with minimal tweaking required and that gives me a sound quality similar to that I used to get with the 59avi. The X-Meridian 7.1 sound card has the option to output a completely unprocessed digital bit stream so I was thinking about connecting the optical output to an external receiver and connecting that to my Stax driver unit. This would take the PC (and all the required tweaking) out of the picture completely and the receiver could handle all the audio processing.
This was my preferred solution but when I asked on the AVS forum I was advised that all I needed was a DAC and directed to this forum. Simply buying a DAC would mean that audio processing would still be done buy the PC so I’d still have to resolve the configuration issues I have and tweak the settings.
I’d therefore be grateful for a bit of advice. Would the option I described be the best way to go in order to achieve my objectives of a plug and play setup while also giving a decent audio quality or should I go down the DAC route?
I’m fairly clueless so I’m grateful for any advice you can offer. Thanks a lot.
Recently I switched from using the Pioneer Elite 59avi to a HTPC but have found the audio quality to be considerably lower. Also, it seems there is a lot of tweaking that needs doing and I can’t get surround sound tracks to sound remotely decent when listening through my Stax (all the balance is wrong). With 59avi I just plugged the driver unit into the player and it sounded great with no tweaking required.
I want to go back to a plug and play setup with minimal tweaking required and that gives me a sound quality similar to that I used to get with the 59avi. The X-Meridian 7.1 sound card has the option to output a completely unprocessed digital bit stream so I was thinking about connecting the optical output to an external receiver and connecting that to my Stax driver unit. This would take the PC (and all the required tweaking) out of the picture completely and the receiver could handle all the audio processing.
This was my preferred solution but when I asked on the AVS forum I was advised that all I needed was a DAC and directed to this forum. Simply buying a DAC would mean that audio processing would still be done buy the PC so I’d still have to resolve the configuration issues I have and tweak the settings.
I’d therefore be grateful for a bit of advice. Would the option I described be the best way to go in order to achieve my objectives of a plug and play setup while also giving a decent audio quality or should I go down the DAC route?
I’m fairly clueless so I’m grateful for any advice you can offer. Thanks a lot.
