[renugaid]

Ok so my setup goes like this:

Auzentech X-FI Hometheater HD -> Yamaha RX-V663 -> Head-Direct EF1.

the Auzen card uses Cirrus CS432A whilst the Yamaha receiver uses Burr Brown PCM1704

My question is, do I have to run digital out to the receiver to use the receiver's DAC? The reason I ask is because the Hometheater HD has the ability to send 8 channel PC speaker sound to my receiver through HDMI allowing my receiver to act as an 8 channel PC speaker setup. So I'm assuming if this is the case, the Yamaha is receiving analogue signals already converted by the Cirrus.

Not sure how this all works. Any enlightenment would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks

 

[dallan]

For my satellite dish and dvd player I have several configurations and i don't actually know why. Sometimes dvds will let me go straight digital to my dac, sometimes on some channels my sat dish network will let me go straight to the dac from the receiver(usually music channels) other times i have to go thru the HDMI connector to the HDTV and digital back to the dac(which is the fall back and works every time) but i don't exactly know if the signal is going thru a built in converter and then back to digital before it gets to my dac. Straight to the dac from the receiver or dac is better always when it works. Kinda new to this, don't watch much tv or movies.

Good Luck because i am a bit stumped myself!

 

[SirDrexl]

Quote:

Originally Posted by renugaid /img/forum/go_quote.gif My question is, do I have to run digital out to the receiver to use the receiver's DAC? The reason I ask is because the Hometheater HD has the ability to send 8 channel PC speaker sound to my receiver through HDMI allowing my receiver to act as an 8 channel PC speaker setup. So I'm assuming if this is the case, the Yamaha is receiving analogue signals already converted by the Cirrus.

Well, if it's going through HDMI, it's a digital signal. Because, well, HDMI is a digital interface.

However, it's possible that the sound card could be converting to analog and then back to digital. I don't know how you would test for that.

 

[gurubhai]

IIRC both your soundcard & AVR support bitstreaming over HDMI. So, you would me using the AVR DAC when using HDMI.

Head over to avsforums for details.

 

[renugaid]

hmmmm ok so I think i've figured it out. The soundcard has 3 outputs:

1.Speakers
2.spdif
3.HDMI

The way to take advantage of all the sound card processing is to use Speakers. To get it to send that signal through the HDMI cable I'd tick a box in the CP saying send speaker signal over HDMI.

Doing this however allows me to use the volume control within windows as well as the receivers volume. So I'd say in this mode, the sound cards DAC is being used. Does this make sense? If so should I just play my music over spdif and use the other mode for games? That way I can get the sound card processing for the games but have the higher quality DAC used for music and movie playback?

 

[Zaluss]

I believe if using the 2.5mm analog connection of your sound card to your receiver would use the sound cards dac vs the spdif/hdmi would be using the receivers dac. You should see a 'digital' vs 'analog' light up between connections.

Both still play a part with the SQ though.

I could be wrong. I used to have a Yamaha V663 connected via toslink from my creative usb sound card and I believe it used the receivers dac instead of the sound cards.

 

[SirDrexl]

Quote:

Originally Posted by renugaid /img/forum/go_quote.gif If so should I just play my music over spdif and use the other mode for games? That way I can get the sound card processing for the games but have the higher quality DAC used for music and movie playback?

Using HDMI, I would try playing a 44.1khz DTS WAV file to see if you can get bit-perfect output when playing 2-channel music. Set up Foobar with WASAPI (Vista/Win7) or kernel streaming (XP). All I have to do on my system is make sure Foobar's volume control is set to maximum, and WASAPI bypasses any processing. You may need to do something else to make sure no processing is being applied, as it would kill the DTS signal.

If you can get the DTS light on the receiver, you know it's bit perfect and there's no need to use a separate SPDIF connection. If not, try the test using SPDIF and use that if it works. Just be sure the volume is turned way down when doing this, because if it's not recognizing DTS it will play noise.

 

[renugaid]

ok I figured out the best way to get around which DAC to use. Anybody else using the Auzen HT HD can follow this guide for best quality sound for music and movies through a receiver/dac and still keep X-Fi processing for games/everything else.

Setting the default sound device to speaker NOT hdmi, and then ticking "play audio from speakers through hdmi" in the auzen control panel will allow all processing from the sound card and its DAC to be sent through to the receiver as an analogue signal. Thats all fine for games and system sounds. For movies and music tho it is far from adequate and I'd prefer the pcm1704 DAC for media. So setting foobar to wasapi HDMI allows hotswitching of sound devices from pure hdmi and speaker sound through hdmi depending on whether a track is playing. I tried as suggested by SirDrexl to play a 44.1khz DTS file and it auto switched my receiver into DTS decoding mode and played it perfectly and blocked out all other windows sounds. As soon as i stopped the track the HDMI would switch back to speaker sound through HDMI mode. For movies Media Player Classic has a WASAPI hdmi mode too in the form of Direcsound HDMI. So that fixes issues with any bitstreaming audio codecs that need decoding by receivers for the best quality.

I hope this all makes sense but after reading through the replies on this thread I figured it out. I truly believe that Auzentech have hit gold with this speaker sound through hdmi mode.

 

[SirDrexl]

Cool. That's similar to what I do with the Xonar D2. I like to use Dolby Headphone for movies, so I set the default sound device to "speakers" (which has an SPDIF out also) and Foobar to use "SPDIF passthrough" (which disables any processing). It will automatically switch between the modes based on what I play.

 

[renugaid]

oh ok cool. I remember seeing something about playing stereo through digital and that would play through either spdif or hdmi on mine, but would not take anything more than a 2 channel output. I'm guessing since its sent to the receiver it as a pcm signal, the spdif cant handle more than 2 channels?

 

[SirDrexl]

SPDIF can only do 2 channels, unless it's carrying something like Dolby Digital or DTS (which are lossy formats that compress multiple channels into the space for 2).

 

[renugaid]

yup so hdmi lets all 8 channels through to the reciever uncompressed.