quality difference in optical "quality" between the terratec pci 5.1 and space 7.1

[lcd]

I'm using the CMI8738-based Aureon 5.1 PCI with alsa and the output definitely is 16-bit 44.1kHz stereo when it's supposed to (48kHz works also). No resampling there. As such it is probably the cheapest replacement for onboard solutions that resample everything to 48 kHz. This was the reason I bought it and it works as expected (in Linux at least).

In addition to lacking volume controls, it can't seem to mix analog inputs into SPDIF output. The toslink input works, though.

 

[lini]

lcd: Are you so sure about that? Resampling doesn't necessarily mean you'll only get 48 KHz sampling rate out of the card - in case of Creative's SB Live! and Audigy, for example, you can very well output 44.1 kHz material in 44.1 kHz, but actually it will first be resampled to 48 kHz internally and then resampled back to 44.1 kHz.

Greetings from Hannover!

Manfred / lini

 

[lcd]

I'm seeing nothing to the contrary. I hope I'm not being fooled by some driver magic, but for example, DTS can be played back using a regular wave player and my amp picks it up as usual. If you know for a fact that the cmi does something silly like the Creative cards do, please tell me.

 

[Breepee]

I see that there's only one kHz-thingy on that card. So probably it's just up- and downsampled 48kHz you're hearing.

 

[madman2003]

Sorry i didn't see this for quite some time. I'm fairly certain it doesn't resample, for several reasons.

1. It passes udail on a normal audio player without a (perfect) resampler, i can assure you the onboard optical sounded crappy and i'm fairly sure some resampler had something to do with it (the programs themselves output 44,1 khz when the internal clock is set to that).
2. Alsamixer allows to set the internal clock and my reciever shows it on the display

I'm fairly sure the analog stuff works, since i've read in several places that it works, but volume control doesn't work. If i ever feel like it i might check myself.