Mobo with optical?

[Alec]

Hello folks.

I've got a sort of PC building question. Im going to get a new one early next year. Now, despite having kicked many ideas around, my favourite currently is to keep playing music from the pc into the AVIs. Even if that changes i want to keep it in mind when buildig the new machine.

Thing is, currently i have a soundcard with a coax out. So im using a coax to optical adaptor to get an optical lead into the AVIs. However, id quite like to take the adaptor out of the chain (just because im weird like that). Does anyone see any real problem with using a motherboard with an optical out? Or are there any well respected two channel cards with optical connections that anyone knows of? (Having one thats 2 channel only may not matter (?), its just that particularly appealed with the 2496, in the spirit of having something dedicated to the job with no frills.

I have pre-empted cries of "get a mac", so, in the nicest possible way, can we pretend thats not an option for now?

 

[Anonymous]

The Asus sound card range is pretty good. My friend has a D2X and swears by it. I've heard the sound it produces too and it is impressive. You can use on board, I do, its fine. In fact, a decent sound card is probably a waste of money if this is all you will use it for.

Don't bother with a MAC, vastly overpriced software and equipment.

 

[Alec]

Thanks genfish. Am i right in thinking its coax and optical ports are the same one? That the coax would be found within the square optical connection, in a similar way to some headphone jacks doubling as optical connections in laptops?

 

[Anonymous]

Hi,

I think you'll find a decent dedicated soundcard will prove to be a far superior option to the on-board sound of any motherboard, your AVIs will easily highlight the difference in quality, when you build your next rig you may be happy with the on-board sound, but if you can borrow a respectable soundcard I feel you won't be in too much of a hurry to enter the bios and revert back.

Apart from Asus other brands to consider are Creative and Auzentech, a good place to read reviews for all types of quality pc kit ( top mobo's etc) is bit-tech.net (custompc.co.uk) it won't do any harm to swot up on the subject before your next build, by the way usb-3 mobo's will be appearing soon, which may be of interest to you.

As for the price of proprietary software, there is an alternative it's called Linux and it's FREE ! apart from playing proprietary games ( their are ways around this ie wine in some instances, but cedega subscription in most ) (though surely game consoles offer better value than high-end graphics cards) you can do anything - and more - that you can in the pay through the nose - locked in - worlds of m'soft & mac.

For any gamer who has a collection of pc games use m'soft for your games, just add another hard drive and use Linux for everything else, you need never shell out for software ever again! Too good to be true ? No, it's hard to believe I know, but it's free to download and use as you wish.

If you're not familiar with Linux then have a look at linux.com, linux.org,distrowatch.com for an idea about new and imminent 'distro' releases. Every distro has a community and forums for help and support, should you need it, and if you can use m'soft/mac then you can use Linux, like all things in life it's just a matter of familiarity.

Freesoftwaremagazine.com is worth a browse too, in fact I urge you to go to this site click on 'columns' scroll down and click on page 3 or 4 until you come to "Warrentless Intrusions" and see what 'functionality' m'soft & intel are building into their products, scary or what ?.

For me at least, AMD cpus / mobo's and Linux is a no-brainer.

Happy listening.

 

[Anonymous]

Yes, the coax has an optical adaptor that comes with the card on all the new Xonar range, though not sure about the Essence.

 

[Anonymous]

Since you are looking at stereo I would definately go with the Asus Xonar Essence STX.

 

[Anonymous]

drewid0.1:
For any gamer who has a collection of pc games use m'soft for your games, just add another hard drive and use Linux for everything else, you need never shell out for software ever again! Too good to be true ? No, it's hard to believe I know, but it's free to download and use as you wish.

You dont need to buy another disk, just use a boot manager like grub. Most distros (like Ubuntu, Fedora etc) come with it as part of the installer, so you can install it next to windows on the same disk and choose which one you want when you switch your PC on. You dont lose the data in your windows partition either. Win win

 

[Alec]

Thanks for the replies all.

That asus looks interesting (even though much pridier than my current card), thanks for the recommendation.

Why would one enter the bios to stop using ones soundcard? i set it up without going into the bios?

We seem to have divided opinion on whether a soundcard will really make a diference to the sound with my speakers. Personally, i figured that the AVIs will be by far the biggest (only?) influence on the overall sound, which genfish seems to be implying (correct me if im wrong...).

 

[PJPro]

al7478:
.......PC building question.......

Hmmm. That would make a good DIY thread methinks

 

[Alec]

It would indeed. Tho it wont actually be me building mine. If theres anything you'd like to ad mr pro, please dont hesitate

 

[Alec]

or add, even.

 

[PJPro]

I'd go with a mobo with optical. If it turns out to be rubbish, you can plug in a soundcard. If it does the job, then you're quids in.

 

[Alec]

Cheers PJ.

Thinking alud, iveseen some cards today that claim to have the optical connection with a coaxial inside, yet theyre round. I assume they are big enough for the rectangular toslink conection to fit. Unless they require mini toslink, or im misreading something.

Actually, some sites could be clearer with their spec lists. Some just say S/PDIF. Not much use, especially to someone who just wants to install the thing and get going.

 

[Alec]

Does the Asus Xonar Essence STX need its own power supply? Just read a review that seemed to imply it does.

 

[Alec]

Anyone?

P.S. Now considering something like an Acer Aspire Revo R3610

 

[Zubkabera]

Yes it does require it's own power not using the power from motherboard for reducing noise so you have to make sure your pc power supply has extra power and spare connector available., but why do you want to go for Asus, as far as I read, AVI has it's own DAC and according to Ashley even a 25 euro dvd player with optical out will sound as good as top end cd player

 

[Alec]

Thanks. So it doesnt plug in to the mains, just in to my PCs power supply?

As to your question, im a bit confused. I suspect one of us is mising something and im quite happy for it to be me. i just need an optical connection from my PC, in order to use the AVI's DAC. Hooking up a DVD player to my PC in order to give an optical feed to the speakers strikes me as a bit left field. I should point out here that I am considering other, cheaper cards too.

 

[Zubkabera]

Hi al7478,

To answer your first question, yes indeed you need to connect the card with PC power supply, like the cd drive in your pc, you don't need external mains.

to answer second question my point was exactly same why spend 200 euro on asus card when you can buy a cheaper x-fi card for 35-45 quid which has optical out, unless you think the dac on asus which I believe is TI PCM1792A Chip better then AVI? Doesn anyone know what DAC chip is used in AVIs?

 

[Alec]

Thanks for the confirmation.

OK, i understand now; it was your reference to DVD players that threw me off - you didnt mention cheaper sound cards. As i said in my last post, i am looking at some of those too though.

Whats more, its not as if i would be using the card's DAC - i would be using its optical connection, thus bypassing its DAC and going straight to the one in the AVIs.

 

[SpiceWeasel]

I would just go for a mobo with an optical output built in, no point buying a fancy soundcard if you are bypassing it with your dac. If the mobo doesn't have an optical output then just buy the cheapest soundcard you can find that has an optical out.

EDIT: It would be worth spending money on a half decent soundcard if you are using it to play games or make music for example.

 

[Alec]

Thanks SpiceWeasel. I am looking at a PC with a card now, but only because ive seen some good deals on machiens that have cards with optical and otherwise good specs; im certainly not getting a top of the range card just for the optical out.

Incidentally, i read about a card called the juli@ card by ESI, which aparently promises bit-perfect output, regardless of the operating system. I'd love to hear of anyones experiences or thoughts.

 

[SpiceWeasel]

Well if you find a good deal on a pc and it comes with a sound card thats a bonus. I was pricing up a pc for my dad a few months ago and there are some real bargains around these days, especially compared to my machine that I built 2or3 years ago.

You can get a very good spec base unit from around £250 upwards these days. It can start getting expensive if you need a pc for gaming or need something powerfull for cad rendering for example. If you avoid the latest (highly expensive) processors and fancy high speed memory for slightly older technology like a core2duo with ddr2 ram you will save an absolute fortune and get at least 80% of the performance.

I have a 2.4Ghz core2duo with 4Gb of ddr400 (ddr2 ram) and windows7 and it is still bloody quick by todays standards. No idea on that juli@ soundcard, but if it's reasonably priced it might be worth a punt. I would deffinately recommend getting a pc with windows 7 though, works faster than vista or xp while using up less memory and the sound quality is better as well (you can tweak xp and vista though).

 

[Alec]

Thanks for the thoughts SpiceWeasel. I'm going to a pretty big budget just now, probably more than i need but i want a decent improvement to what i have now.