line out or digital out to reciever?

[neilo]

Just a quick question: does the digital output
from an sblive sound better than line out when connected
to an external digital reciever (and when playing mp3)?
I guess what I am asking is, do mp3 get decoded to an
anologue signal anyway by the computer or to a digital
(PCM)?

Thanks for advice.

 

[MrWhiteUK]

If you use the digital out on the sound card, the recievers DAC (Digital-Anolog Converter) will be used instead of the sound card's DAC so it depends on the quality of each DAC depending on which gives a better sound, I would put my money on the receiver personally.

I was told when I contacted VideoLogic about my Sonic Fury (aka Santa Cruz) that mp3's/.WAV's are sent out as PCM. MP3's would be decoded before they leave the sound card I presume as most receivers can't decode mp3.

Hope that helps.

 

[neilo]

Thank you Mr White UK for confirming that soundcard outputs a digital signal from mp3 and not an analog. Therefore, in theory, digital output will be better musically, assuming the DAC in the reciever is better. However, in practice, has anyone actually compared the two with their home setups (purely for music, not games or dolby digital dvd playback)?

thanks
Neilo

 

[Noriaki]

It's Direct Digital output. The MP3 is stored digitally on your HDD, the CPU converts it to a WAV which is sent digitally to the sound card, and the soundcard will just forward it to the digital output.

There is no DAC->ADC step in the soundcard.

The SBLive! has a crappy DAC. It really does, there are some sound cards with Decent DACs, but the SBLive! isn't one of them.
But even decent cards, the inside of your computer is very very electrically noisy, and the soundcard is not shielded. The DAC in your recivier is almost guarnateed to do a better job, unless it's a very very poor reciever.