Quality differences in the digital parts of envy24 cards?

[madman2003]

Are the digital parts on Chaintech AV-710 equal to lets say:

- Terratec 7.1 Space
- Maudio revolution 5.1/7.1
- Audiotrack Prodigy 7.1LT

Is there anything besides the used chip(envy24) that can affect the quality of the card as a transport? (keep in mind that a not so expensive (surround) reciever will be at the other side and not a dac1 or something alike)

 

[madman2003]

bump

 

[sgrossklass]

Quote:

Originally Posted by madman2003 Is there anything besides the used chip(envy24) that can affect the quality of the card as a transport?

Sure - the transmitter chip and various other parts, for example. That said, you'll certainly get pretty good results with the AV-710.

 

[madman2003]

You have a terratec 5.1 sky according to your sig, do you like it? (have you ever compared it to a chaintech av-710?)

 

[Glassman]

the thing is, S/PDIF transmitter is a part of the Envy and all Envy cards I know use the same clocks and power regulators, so I'd say all Envy based cards are virtually the same in this regard.. there can be variations of course, but only slight ones.. Chaintech will be excellent transport..

 

[sgrossklass]

Hmm, if the xmtr is in the Envy24xx, what's the CS8414 on the Aureon good for then? Rx only for ASRC jitter-busting, I guess?

@madman2003: Yes, I do like my Aureon. Best sound card I've had so far, and beats my standalone CDP (Onkyo DX-6920) - not that this would be saying awfully much, as I just haven't heard real high-end stuff yet. Not good for driving the HD590 directly, presumably due to low output impedance (these cans apparently prefer ~120 ohms and can be fairly bright off near-zero Z_outs); input quality is just fine for my purposes but some power supply harmonics do creep in and reduce S/N to a bit under 90 dB (anyone ever figured out where that's coming from?), so it's not mastering level. The drivers could be a bit more full-featured and have some quirks (do *not* try to play anything else while the card is blocked by its native ASIO interface), but at least there haven't been any SMP related problems. I cannot compare it to the AV-710 since that simply is not available here.

 

[Glassman]

Envy has only Tx integrated, CS8414 is just a 96kHz Rx.. that's why you can always see digital output on such cards, but inputs only sometimes..