[abbafan79]

Hi everybody, this is my first post here, although I've been reading this site for a couple of days now. I'm very impressed by some of the, obviously very technically minded people here, and I want to tap some of that knowledge to help me "source" a new sound card for myself

At the moment I have an Audigy 2 ZS (card only version), Marantz sr7300 digital receiver, Quad 22L floorstanders. Sennheiser headset. (headphones+mic)

Ok here's what I'm going to be doing on my PC:

I want to be able to use the Audigy 2 ZS to talk (voice over IP) and use another soundcard to connect optically to my Marantz sr7300 digital reciever for listening to mp3s+flacs (without my voice conversation outputting to amp -- I want it on headset audio only).

Ok now, heres some more queries, stay with me,

I know I'm covering alot of areas here:

I've read about ADAT being 8 channel, and I've also read that SPDIF is 2 channel.

Now, ...am I going overboard by wanting ADAT? I would definitely like to have 8 channel audio if this is used in consumer level stuff....ie SACD or DVDA or any future formats even. Or is ADAT aimed only at editing? I have a funny feeling DVD players only use SPDIF which I'm led to believe is 2 channel!?! Do any DVD players use ADAT?

So, Can you help me choose which soundcard to get? I dont want to upgrade it for a long time. and ....All I want to do is listen to music on it, if there was any editing, it would be simple stuff like splicing my conversations up and converting to mp3.

I listen to the Bee Gees, ABBA, Queen, Classical Music, Jean Michel Jarre, Paul McCartney, Celine Dion, Elton John, Pink Floyd etc etc.. I'm wanting a card that's really going to be good at all this. I know the Quad speakers are quite "honest", and so I thought about perhaps the 1212M, to enjoy the detail that's been spoken of it.

But I'm really looking for any other suggestions. What's important to me, is that it's below £200 and available within Europe. Optical is an absolute must have. It also must be internal PCI with no boxes that sit outside the computer.....5.25" bay control knobs etc are welcomed though!

I hope someone out there can help, as I'm really wanting to enjoy the best sound possible...(under £200)


I hope this wasnt too long and hasnt bored you all to sleep..this forum looks very promising.

Dave, Scotland

 

[abbafan79]

hmm anybody?

 

[dallasstar]

For music, you'll want plain 2-channel PCM going through your spdif. It is possible to use multiple channels through spdif if your soundcard is able to do real-time dolby digital encoding (no PCI soundcards on the market can do this yet, but they're able to pass through already encoded dolby/dts content; nvidia soundstorm onboard audio can do real-time dolby digital encoding, but you'd have to have one of the motherboards w/ this feature). Even if you could get real-time dolby digital encoding, the sound would have been compressed, so the quality would be degraded from the original. Also, as far as I know, ADAT isn't supported by any receivers or dvd players, so you'd be wasting time and money (imho) if you were to try to get ADAT on your card.

So really, your main concerns are to get bit-perfect output from your spdif, and, if your reciever (or whatever) is not jitter-proof, then you'd probably want a card that has very little jitter as well. You said you were looking at the 1212M. Well, that's perfect since it supports both spdif and ADAT. I don't think it supports dolby/dts passthrough via spdif, though.