Another DAC question

[admin_exported]

Y'know I consider myself quite techie but anything to do with PC's and DAC's is like voodoo to me so if you lot could collectivly help me out I would appreciate it.
In my home office (alright spare bedroom)I have my HP PC connected to a Denon 3910 receiver (with a coaxial cable, no optical on the PC) and fed through a pair of wall mounted Denon speakers I got off a micro system. The amp (although old) is cracking and cost a grand when I bought it. It's a bit much for my needs but I was loathe to part with it when I repleaced it with a Denon 1910 sporting HDMI. Anyway, I'll get on with it...my 3910 has DAC's (good 'uns) and if I'm feeding it through a coaxial cable is there any point in feeding it through an external DAC first? Would I be better off with a superior sound card. Am I by-passing my souncard anyway by virtue of the coaxial connection or would I ultimately benefit from both (DAC & soundcard upgrade)?
I use Apple lossless and I plan to upgrade the speakers to some Q acoustics 1010's (or similar) eventually.
Cheers for any help.

 

[Craig M.]

i assume you are using itunes on a pc? which version of windows are you using?

if you can get bit perfect output from your pc, and you are happy with the dac in your receiver, there is no need for you to buy an external dac or new soundcard.

 

[Anonymous]

I'm using Vista Home Premium. Well on the basis of that it was more simple than I thought!
Cheers

 

[Craig M.]

read this thread. near the bottom is a description of how to get bit perfect from itunes in windows. i think it upsamples to 48khz otherwise.

 

[Anonymous]

Crackin' thanks for that.

 

[Anonymous]

1) Is your Denon able to report what sample rate it is receiving from the PC (does it display 16 bit 44.1khz when listening to CD sourced music)

2) What soundcard does the HP have

Before you make any decision on any DAC replacement, you need to be sure 16/44.1 is being outputted from the PC.

 

[Anonymous]

Hmm the amp is showing PCM and has AL24 processing (it doesn't specify specifically what it's receiving) which I presume means it can support various kinds of bit data. I'm not sure about my soundcard but I have a Realtek HD Audio manager thing whih allows me to choose between 16 and 24 bit at various outputs. None of it means much to me to be honest.

 

[Anonymous]

In HD Audio Manager under the SPDIF options (little spanner icon), you should be able to set the output bit rate. Provding the equaliser is disabled (Sound Effects) and all inputs are muted and you are using Kernel Streaming/WASPI, the output from most Realtec codecs should be bit perfect.

The exact Realtek chipset should be shown by clicking on the information icon (i) in the bottom left of HD Audio Manager.

I think all ALC88x family should be bit perfect if the above guidelines are followed.

The above assumes you have the turquoise coloured HD control panel.