Connecting sound card digitally to an external Denon receiver

[shashankmittal]

Hi!!

I have a Creative SB Live 24-bit sound card in my PC, connected digitally using a digital cable (stereo minijack to coaxial cable) to my Denon 1905 receiver. The reciever is connected to KEF KHT 2005.2 speakers.

I use my PC primarily for listening MP3s and watching DVDs. I dont play games and I also dont need on-the-fly Dolby AC-3 encoding. I also DO NOT intend to use CMSS 3D or EAX. I use SPDIF as the audio setting in PowerDVD so as to pass-through Dolby and DTS tracks.

I wanted to know whether upgrading the sound card to something better like Creative X-fi XtremeMusic, would give me better sound quality. Since I am connecting the sound card to the receiver digitally, so in my opinion there wont be any difference in sound quality while watching DVD movies, but while listening to MP3s, there could be a significant difference. What do you say...?

Thanx in advance...

 

[PurdueRy]

While mp3's are not passed through in a bitstream like DD and DTS and such are. I do not think it warrants buying a new sound card to try a diffferent digital out. I don't know if creative has changed their resampling issues with with the X-fi series but that was one major downside of creative cards.

The X-fi series is a major upgrade for some people because of its analog connections, not its digital.

 

[YOyoYOhowsDAjello]

Welcome to AT.

Seems like you're concentrating on if the 24-bit crystallizer is going to improve your mp3 listening.

You might want to check out this review here about it since they actually took some measurements and didn't just spit back creative's marketing statements like some reviews did:
http://techreport.com/reviews/2005q4/soundblaster-x-fi/index.x?pg=3

Looks like a major component of what it's doing is screwing with the frequency response of the sound. The bass and treble are incresed while the midrange is reduced. On the higher settings it also introduces more distortion.

I think a good chunk of it is appealing to people who like the artificially boosted bass and treble sound for music playback. Obviously boosting both of these is not going to make everything sound better, especially if you're after accurate sound.