[laon]

Yes but the surround and the headphone (or whatever you plug your dac to) will play from different dac (since soundcard is a dac too) which may affect the sound but you won't probably notice it if your surround isn't transparent enough.

 

[AllTernative]

How much would it affect the sound? I'd go from S/PDIF to the DAC. So the soundcard wouldn't be doing any digital to audio conversion, would it?

 

[laon]

Your surround will be hooked up to your sound card unless you have dac with surround and headphone output, which is pretty rare.

 

[AllTernative]

Well, then I must have misunderstood the postings in this thread.
I thought I can pass through the external DAC from the soundcard over S/PDIF.

 

[cel4145]

You can. NamelessPFG explained it correctly on the previous page. An internal sound card can still do digital signal processing before sending the digital signal out via S/PDIF to an external DAC. A USB DAC completely takes the place of the internal sound card.

 

[laon]

And you can still use the sound card to output for different setup.

 

[NamelessPFG]

Quote:

So it would be possible to get an internal soundcard like the creative titanium HD and route with S/PDIF the signal to an external DAC which gets the surround sound that way?
 
I'm asking since I want to build an audio setup where I have surround sound and a device on my desk to plug the headphones/speakers into.
(My thread: http://www.head-fi.org/t/665121/audio-setup-questions)

 
Yes, you can do that...but doing so with a Titanium HD would, frankly, be a waste of money given that the Titanium HD's main improvement over the basic X-Fi Titanium model is in the DAC. (And it's certainly competitive with the JDS Labs ODAC; I was struggling to hear ANY difference whatsoever between the ODAC and Titanium HD when volume-matched!)
 
Either just get the Titanium HD, or get a basic X-Fi Titanium for $50 or less and put the savings toward a nice external DAC.
 
Quote:

You can. NamelessPFG explained it correctly on the previous page. An internal sound card can still do digital signal processing before sending the digital signal out via S/PDIF to an external DAC. A USB DAC completely takes the place of the internal sound card.

 
Quote:

And you can still use the sound card to output for different setup.

 
Both of you are right on the money.
 
There are certainly several cases where people like to dedicate an audio device solely to VoIP programs like Skype, TeamSpeak, Ventrilo, Mumble, etc. and pipe their game audio through speakers, for instance.