[coolshot]

ok first off i have an asus A8N premium mobo using onboard spdif output to my greatmarch dac. When i first plugged in using my dac, music started to skip. I thought it was the dac causing the skipping so i turned it off. Mind you, i still have the bluejeans cable plugged into the mobo. So i go back to my old pc setup with itunes,senn hd201 and onboard. Still that freaking skipping. I go back and pull the digi coax from the back and viola, no more skipping.

WTH? first off, why can't i use both the line out and digital output at the same time without skipping. Second, even though the cable is unplugged on the dac side and not in use, why is there still a signal being outputted and causing the skipping. Lastly, My PC in an integrated cubby hole in my desk. It is very inconvient to get to the back of my pc. I hate pulling this 60lb beast out and then putting it back in.

any suggestions would be greatly appreciated as i would love to have the dac output sound from both my dvd player and PC.

*update its prolly the cpu, its only a stock opty 144 at 1.8. I noticed when im doing other tasks like switching pages, it will skip more frequently. I wonder if a soundcard will help offload some of the duty to prevent that.

 

[infinitesymphony]

Onboard sound and video rely on the processor to do the work, whereas actual hardware does the processing on the card. Your problem sounds like an onboard bottleneck that a sound card might fix. For the price of a less-expensive sound card, it can't hurt to try.

 

[coolshot]

ill prolly try a chaintech for 30 bucks. it couldnt hurt plus then i could run it bit-perfect.

 

[LeonvB]

Could work, but also remember that even a soundcard needs input, even if it's only a stream with a relative low amount of data. If I load my dual core CPU high enough (which is hard, it requires multiple encoding streams to do that) I sometimes can get it to skip too, despite the dedicated soundcard. Under normal circumstances though that never happens. Just remember Windows isn't a real-time OS: it needs time to switch to the thread that feeds your soundcard.