Digital Audio Out

[Kishan]

I have a Chaintech AV710 with optuical, but I want to use the digital coax out on my motherboard. Does it matter, isn't digital, just digital? Or will the be a difference in quality. Not concerned about cpu cycles since the soundcard doesn't have hardware acceleration.
Thanks,
Kishan

 

[Kishan]

the reason i need this is because my speakers have one optical input, which i will use for xbox, and digital coax for PC.

 

[SynthDude2001]

I'm pretty sure there's no difference between the two....the same signal is being sent.

 

[MustISO]

Digital coax and digital optical are the same. No difference in the transfer of the data. Optical does not suffer from electrical interference issues but is more fragile. Either is fine.

 

[Kishan]

does it matter if the digital audio is coming from my motherboard(Asus K8V SE Deluxe), or if it is coming from my soundcard(Chaintech AV710)?

 

[Kishan]

edited subtitle to show if there is a difference between the digital audio out on the motherboard or the sound card.

 

[tr1kstanc3]

i use the digital optical out on my 710 and it sounds pretty good.

 

[Boogak]

Shouldn't be a difference, it's all 1s and 0s.

 

[CSMR]

There will be a difference. The Chaintech can with the right drivers give a bit-perfect digital out, whereas motherboards cannot, mainly because of resampling to 48khz (and also possibly because of interference from Windows kmixer which some soundcards can bypass). The Chaintech will also have less jitter. You may not notice the difference unless you have relatively high-quality speakers (I don't think there are any such speakers with a direct optical input).