[seekadds]

sorry i know this question has been asked before, but i have been searching the forums for a few hours now, and i'm getting conflicting answers.

is there any benefit of having a discete sound card if you are going to use digital out (optical/spdif) to an external DAC?

this is the setup i'm talking about:
Computer -> sound card -> optical out -> DAC -> amp -> speakers/'phones

several have said that optical out "completely bypasses" the sound card, but others say that the sound card can still impart certain sound processing tricks like EAX, dolby, equalizer, etc. through the optical out. if the latter is true, what affects can the sound card have exactly on the optical out signal.

i am also of the impression that gaming can have a (very minor) increase in performance with a sound card. would this still be true in my hypothetical setup, as opposed to only a usb DAC or onboard digital out to DAC?

music and gaming are equally important to me, and i'd be willing to throw down a bit more cash for both an internal sound card and a DAC if it means i can get the best of both worlds in one shot, without having to change operating system settings every time to select a different audio output (sound card or DAC).

 

[Ezekiel33]

Very interesting and relevant question I would also really appreciate to understand more in detail this subject

 

[11amaberry]

Not sure how a sound card could help game performance, except if the video card was also producing the sound. But a DAC makes the sound... so I wouldn't think a sound card to dac would be any different than motherboard with built in sound card to dac...

 

[FallenAngel]

I highly recommend reading the digital audio primer in my signature for answers to most of your questions.

The short story : digital output to an external DAC will certainly "bypass" any internal DAC on a sound card, but you're obviously taking a digital signal - the quality of that signal (timing, isolation, bit perfect) and what it contains (mixing channels, EQ, gaming or movie effects, encoding) must come from somewhere and those things can either be handled by the motherboard onboard sound card or a separate one. I know this doesn't directly answer your question, but with this information, and the information in the primer, you have answers to most questions relating to this topic.

As for sound card affecting game performance - the operations are offloaded off the CPU, giving an average 2-3% FPS gain according to the benchmarks I've seen. Definitely not something to concentrate on, but not something to be missed. You also get the benefits of gaming effects as most onboard soundcards do not process EAX, OpenAL, CMSS, etc.

 

[seekadds]

Quote:

Originally Posted by 11amaberry /img/forum/go_quote.gif Not sure how a sound card could help game performance, except if the video card was also producing the sound. But a DAC makes the sound... so I wouldn't think a sound card to dac would be any different than motherboard with built in sound card to dac...

Quote:

Originally Posted by FallenAngel /img/forum/go_quote.gif I highly recommend reading the digital audio primer in my signature for answers to most of your questions. The short story : digital output to an external DAC will certainly "bypass" any internal DAC on a sound card, but you're obviously taking a digital signal - the quality of that signal (timing, isolation, bit perfect) and what it contains (mixing channels, EQ, gaming or movie effects, encoding) must come from somewhere and those things can either be handled by the motherboard onboard sound card or a separate one. I know this doesn't directly answer your question, but with this information, and the information in the primer, you have answers to most questions relating to this topic. As for sound card affecting game performance - the operations are offloaded off the CPU, giving an average 2-3% FPS gain according to the benchmarks I've seen. Definitely not something to concentrate on, but not something to be missed. You also get the benefits of gaming effects as most onboard soundcards do not process EAX, OpenAL, CMSS, etc.

from another thread: "i'll tell you straight out that using a standalone DAC sucks for gaming (example dac1/opus as primary preferred sound device). It provides no hardware acceleration and your computer's performance will probably suffer. However for sound quality any decent standalone DAC should annihilate any soundcard. The solution is to use the features of both and get the benefits of both without the disadvantages. To do this, you would probably use a standalone DAC unit as a DAC only, choose optical in order to isolate it from the computer's dirty switching powersupply/usb power, and use your soundcard/built in on mobo optical out. You will get the hardware acceleration benefits, the computer will only output digital signal relieving it of digital to analog conversion duties (your stand alone unit is superior at this task), and optical isolation will allow the stand alone DAC unit to perform without the computer's foul interferences."

so is this guy right? does taking an optical spdif signal from my motherboard-integrated "sound card" still provide hardware acceleration, even though it's not discrete?

my mobo has an optical output, so it'd be great to save the money, effort, extra drivers, etc. that a discrete sound card would entail.

i don't mind about the special gaming/movie effects from a discrete sound card, but i do want to offload as much from my cpu as possible.

 

[11amaberry]

Are you saying you want to use a dac for gaming? That you want better audio while gaming? A sound card would probably be better for that, giving you surround sound support and such.

 

[seekadds]

^^i am going to use an external DAC for sure, and yes and i game. better audio for gaming would be nice, but isn't as important as the extra load i could take off my cpu, and that's why i'm thinking of also using a discrete sound card. i only use 2.1 speakers and headphones, surround sound isn't a factor.

you're right though, i've been reading about the xonar essence st, and it looks like a nice all-around solution. the thing is i am lazy

and the outputs would be on the floor away from me, making it hard to switch headphones. plus, like i said before, i hate to have more software on my machine.

right now i'm thinking...if something like a zhaolu d2.5 can take the toslink optical straight from my mobo, but still use the onboard sound hardware acceleration while gaming, that would be a good fix for me for now.

the thing is, i notice when i plug say my ibasso d10 or uDAC in through USB, they show up in windows sound settings as an entirely separate audio output, which could be related to how they don't allow hardware accel in games? thus, i assume if i use the optical out from mobo, my output audio device would still be "high-def whatever" but the zhaolo (or whatever else DAC that takes optical input) would be doing the real work.

man i can write long posts....

 

[FallenAngel]

Quote:

Originally Posted by seekadds /img/forum/go_quote.gif from another thread: "i'll tell you straight out that using a standalone DAC sucks for gaming (example dac1/opus as primary preferred sound device). It provides no hardware acceleration and your computer's performance will probably suffer. However for sound quality any decent standalone DAC should annihilate any soundcard. The solution is to use the features of both and get the benefits of both without the disadvantages. To do this, you would probably use a standalone DAC unit as a DAC only, choose optical in order to isolate it from the computer's dirty switching powersupply/usb power, and use your soundcard/built in on mobo optical out. You will get the hardware acceleration benefits, the computer will only output digital signal relieving it of digital to analog conversion duties (your stand alone unit is superior at this task), and optical isolation will allow the stand alone DAC unit to perform without the computer's foul interferences." so is this guy right? does taking an optical spdif signal from my motherboard-integrated "sound card" still provide hardware acceleration, even though it's not discrete? my mobo has an optical output, so it'd be great to save the money, effort, extra drivers, etc. that a discrete sound card would entail. i don't mind about the special gaming/movie effects from a discrete sound card, but i do want to offload as much from my cpu as possible.

While quoting this person, you really skipped over most of what I wrote, read it again. Also read the primer, it will help. The key point missing in his response is HOW you connect the "source" to "DAC" and where the "transport" actually is. USB will set communication between the motherboard and the digitial receiver in the DAC while S/PDIF will set communication between the sound card and the DAC, processing will happen on the USB chip in the DAC or in your sound card - that is where it differs.

As for optical vs coax - if you have transformer coupled coax, it's better than optical in terms of jitter numbers, but that's another story.

Quote:

Originally Posted by seekadds /img/forum/go_quote.gif ^^i am going to use an external DAC for sure, and yes and i game. better audio for gaming would be nice, but isn't as important as the extra load i could take off my cpu, and that's why i'm thinking of also using a discrete sound card. i only use 2.1 speakers and headphones, surround sound isn't a factor. you're right though, i've been reading about the xonar essence st, and it looks like a nice all-around solution. the thing is i am lazy and the outputs would be on the floor away from me, making it hard to switch headphones. plus, like i said before, i hate to have more software on my machine. right now i'm thinking...if something like a zhaolu d2.5 can take the toslink optical straight from my mobo, but still use the onboard sound hardware acceleration while gaming, that would be a good fix for me for now. the thing is, i notice when i plug say my ibasso d10 or uDAC in through USB, they show up in windows sound settings as an entirely separate audio output, which could be related to how they don't allow hardware accel in games? thus, i assume if i use the optical out from mobo, my output audio device would still be "high-def whatever" but the zhaolo (or whatever else DAC that takes optical input) would be doing the real work. man i can write long posts....

As for any real world performance gain, closing a few applications would yield better performance.

Onboard sound cards generally have minimal hardware acceleration - sure better than a USB receiver, but nothing compared to a sound card.

Again, judging from your questions, read the primer. I'm out.

 

[Feanor]

My personal experience is that there is a big difference in sound when outputting the digital signal via the onboard audio on my MB compared to when I output the digital signal from a dedicated sound card. I believe that my onboard audio has 48kHz internal processing that cannot be bypassed and that is the reason for this difference (because upsampling from 44kHz to 48kHz and back is not a good thing). I get the bit perfect signal from my soundcard and some wierd ****ed-up signal from my onboard audio digital out.

 

[wmf]

yes i created a thread, similar to this one. i think a few of us are in the same boat...

my situation is that i am a pc gamer, but also listen to music. soundcard works well with games, but an external dac a LOT better for music. Ill keep the x-fi titanium pro sound card run that to the new dac (toslink, optical) then from there running RCAs to the headphone amp and from there to the cans....

"The xifi will output digital signal only as well as provide the same hardware acceleration benefits as you had before (no change here). However, now the DAC will be doing the signal processing and conversion to audible sound for your amp."

many thanks to jh4db536s for his responses, much appreciated.
its made it clear what i need to have a nice balance between the x-fi sound card/and the external DAC... both for gaming/and music.

to the op, you really need a dedicated soundcard, an x-fi of some sort ........ Auzentech Forte 7.1 would be sweet...

 

[seekadds]

Quote:

Originally Posted by wmf /img/forum/go_quote.gif yes i created a thread, similar to this one. i think a few of us are in the same boat... my situation is that i am a pc gamer, but also listen to music. soundcard works well with games, but an external dac a LOT better for music. Ill keep the x-fi titanium pro sound card run that to the new dac (toslink, optical) then from there running RCAs to the headphone amp and from there to the cans.... "The xifi will output digital signal only as well as provide the same hardware acceleration benefits as you had before (no change here). However, now the DAC will be doing the signal processing and conversion to audible sound for your amp." many thanks to jh4db536s for his responses, much appreciated. its made it clear what i need to have a nice balance between the x-fi sound card/and the external DAC... both for gaming/and music. to the op, you really need a dedicated soundcard, an x-fi of some sort ........ Auzentech Forte 7.1 would be sweet...

thanks everyone for all the responses. i'm a slow learner but i think it's starting to make sense.

in the end i ended up smashing my wallet and grabbing the xonar essence ST, due to its amazing reviews, and a maverick audio tube magic D1.

the xonar doesn't have all the gaming features as say an x-fi, but with only stereo speakers and headset, it should be more than fine for gaming, while providing the hardware acceleration i'm looking for.

the maverick just looks like a versatile piece at an affordable price. i'm sure there are better dac's even within my budget but i got tired of looking and asking ppl for advice so i just snagged it.

my only unease (other than the $$) is that the xonar is known for having an already very good DAC, for an internal sound card. it seems like a waste to spend so much money for it, then workaround one of its greatest strengths. oh well, at least it's a good backup if the maverick tube magic has troubles.

hopefully they will come in soon, so i can start setting it all up and posting my impressions.

 

[wmf]

Quote:

Originally Posted by seekadds /img/forum/go_quote.gif thanks everyone for all the responses. i'm a slow learner but i think it's starting to make sense. in the end i ended up smashing my wallet and grabbing the xonar essence ST, due to its amazing reviews, and a maverick audio tube magic D1. the xonar doesn't have all the gaming features as say an x-fi, but with only stereo speakers and headset, it should be more than fine for gaming, while providing the hardware acceleration i'm looking for. the maverick just looks like a versatile piece at an affordable price. i'm sure there are better dac's even within my budget but i got tired of looking and asking ppl for advice so i just snagged it. hopefully they will come in soon, so i can start setting it all up and posting my impressions.

should be very nice. enjoy.

 

[FallenAngel]

I'm really at a loss of words in your choice of Xonar Essence ST... why? You are using it for digital transport only... meaning a $50 X-Fi XtremeMusic off eBay would do the exactly same thing and just as well... sigh. Oh well, live and learn.

 

[ROBSCIX]

I very much agree and the card does not provide hardware acceleration either as the OP suggests. It is a software card, all effects are done through software thus taxing the CPU to some extent.

@Seekadds, If you were looking for hardware accelerated gaming routines such as EAX 1,2,3,4,5 and OpenAL you should have went with a different card.

For instance, the Forte 7.1 would make a great source for gaming using a DAC as all the features and effects can be sent through the S/Pdif output to your external DAC.
The card has a real DSP for hardware acceleration and transformer coupled S/Pdif output. There are other cards that give similar features also if you look around.
Enjoy your new audio system.

 

[seekadds]

Quote:

Originally Posted by ROBSCIX /img/forum/go_quote.gif I very much agree and the card does not provide hardware acceleration either as the OP suggests. It is a software card, all effects are done through software thus taxing the CPU to some extent. @Seekadds, If you were looking for hardware accelerated gaming routines such as EAX 1,2,3,4,5 and OpenAL you should have went with a different card. For instance, the Forte 7.1 would make a great source for gaming using a DAC as all the features and effects can be sent through the S/Pdif output to your external DAC. The card has a real DSP for hardware acceleration and transformer coupled S/Pdif output. There are other cards that give similar features also if you look around. Enjoy your new audio system.

well this is why i was asking lol. i was already thinking that the xonar essence is really for people who don't use an external DAC/amp, with it's good internal DAC and headphone amp.

it's not too late to return the xonar essence and grab an auzen forte. i'll have to eat the shipping costs, but i'll be "saving" money in the end since the forte is moderately cheaper.

thanks for your inputs everyone.