[forsberg]

Current setup:

Creative Live line out -> Marantz SR4200 receiver

Future:

Want coaxial output from computer -> Marantz SR4200 receiver

Usage:

music (headphone out on receiver)
movies (5-speaker system into receiver)

I do not care much for gaming so all those fancy onboard effects and stuff are pretty much useless to me. Nor will I ever buy a set of computer surround sound speakers and plug them into the sound card.

So what is the best sound card for "just" coaxial output?

 

[Alu]

This card seems pretty good for coax output only: http://www.empiricalaudio.com/frComputer_Audio.html

However it may not quite fit your budget, which would be a good thing to indicate.
The E-mu 0404 also has a coax output and would be a cheaper alternative.

 

[forsberg]

i was reading on these forums that optical out and coaxial out are really not much diff...

if I want a digital signal out of my computer into my receiver, will anything that has digital out work just as fine?

(ex TBAAM, creative, m-audio transit, etc...)

what would be the diff between an optical out for a usb dongle vs. optical out from sound card (pci) ??

 

[pedxing]

Quote:

Originally Posted by forsberg i was reading on these forums that optical out and coaxial out are really not much diff... if I want a digital signal out of my computer into my receiver, will anything that has digital out work just as fine? (ex TBAAM, creative, m-audio transit, etc...) what would be the diff between an optical out for a usb dongle vs. optical out from sound card (pci) ??

Make sure both the receiver and SPDIF output agrees on the sampling rate of the data. If you go down the coaxial route, I vaguely remember there are different types of coaxial cables too, so watch out.

I believe there is no general difference between the digital out of a USB dongle versus a soundcard. The difference would be inherent to the product itself. For example, certain soundcards, especially AC97 copliant ones, will usually mix 44.1kHz source into a 48 kHz stream before outputting it through the digital out.

Make sure the soundcard supports 5.1 with the SPDIF. Some really cheap soundcard support stereo only with the SPDIF out and rely on the other analog outs for all the other channels.