Does sound card matter for SPDIF out?

[arterius2]

im currently using my motherboard's onboard SDPIF(coax+optical) out to my Beresford TC-7510 mk6 DAC. im wondering if switching to a high end soundcard would improve sound quality.

ive read some forums saying that soundcard doesnt really affect SQ if you are going digital to external DAC. but then im seeing these people with expensive soundcards running digital out. so why waste money if you end up doing digital anyways?

IMO, i dont think it matters since SPDIF is digital, and digital is all the same. but id just like to hear what others have to say regarding this topic.

ps my motherboard is ASUS P5K-E /w ADI 1988B sound processor.
spec sheet regarding 1988B: http://www.analog.com/UploadedFiles/...988A_1988B.pdf

 

[IPodPJ]

There are several threads on this. I provided a detailed answer on a recent one. Scroll through the thread titles. It shouldn't be past page 2 or 3.

And yes, it does matter.

 

[joe_cool]

In case you want a quick and simple answer, yes it does matter.

The clock and driver circuit on the sound card will directly affect the SPDIF output quality. I don't want to get into jitter but some of it comes from the clock. Also I've never seen a pulse transformer on a motherboard SPDIF output. This omission will cause noise in the recovered audio like hum and mouse ticks. AC-97 specs for onboard audio allow resampling to 48kHz for driver simplification. This will make your CDs (44.1kHz) sound less than great.

 

[arterius2]

well i have a creative audigy 2, however, i intentionally removed that from my pc after i got this motherboard, because looking at the spec sheet for the ADI 1988B, it the best product Analog Devices has to offer, supports up to 24bit/192k sample rate etc, i didnt think i need the audigy 2, creative's drivers are always ****, and im using vista64bit. and also my audigy 2 doesnt have coax/optical out connecter and i couldnt see the reason to hook it up to a converter either, just one more stage for data to get mixed up. so do u guys think the audigy 2 is a better transport than my onboard sound processor? in which case i would need to go minijack-coax/optical.

 

[alleyezon_d]

In my opinion the newest onboard audio chips work just as well if not better than older sound cards. As long as your SPDIF out doesn't resample all signals to 48khz like some do you should be good. I have an onboard realtek ALC889A and I use the digital coaxial out for it to my external DAC with absolutely no issues. It does bit-perfect.