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Thread: Soundcards Vs Dac's and HDMI

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    Soundcards Vs Dac's and HDMI

    Ok so hoping the audio gurus can clear up my confusion once and for all on the subject of PC Audio.

    Its generally accepted that a USB DAC is going to produce better audio than a sound card, but as I understand it they are not great for gaming, is this right?


    HDMI audio via the graphics card, my understanding is that the systems sound card does the audio processing and passes the signal through the graphics card and out to the TV / Reciver, again is this right?

    If thats the case is there a benifit from a higher end sound card if your using HDMI out for the audio, its digital right so should sound the same? Guessing the benifit is from any aditional processing the card can do?


    If someone can point me in the direction of or can explain the whole thing to me in detail that would be cool

    Looked into this area before and its something I have never managed to get my head around, Personal experience says to me Low end onboard sound = crappy audio, very little amplification, decent sound card = decent audio.

    I saw a AV forum under consumer electronics but figured this is the best forum as this is purely PC side.

    Cheers

    /n00b
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    Re: Soundcards Vs Dac's and HDMI

    Quote Originally Posted by Platinum View Post

    Its generally accepted that a USB DAC is going to produce better audio than a sound card, but as I understand it they are not great for gaming, is this right?


    HDMI audio via the graphics card, my understanding is that the systems sound card does the audio processing and passes the signal through the graphics card and out to the TV / Reciver, again is this right?

    If thats the case is there a benifit from a higher end sound card if your using HDMI out for the audio, its digital right so should sound the same? Guessing the benifit is from any aditional processing the card can do?


    /n00b
    IIRC it depends a bit what you sending down the HDMI cable. Raw music as PCM will still make the PC work but is uncompressed so no lossyness. For movies, if you're chucking the AC3/DTS audio out to a receiver, most of the the 5.1, 7.1 or whatever work is handled at the amp/receiver, not on the PC, but it is lossy (although not usually noticably).

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    Re: Soundcards Vs Dac's and HDMI

    Very broadly speaking, the things that affect the quality of the sound occur at the digital to analogue conversion, and from there downstream (as analogue is more susceptible to degradation).

    Thus the quality of the DAC unit is one of the most important bits. Other key important bits are the amplification of the (now) analogue signal and the quality of the speakers in sounding that amplified signal.

    So imagine you have those three-ish components to worry about.

    A typical cheap PC setup is to use the DAC on the soundchip in the sound card or motherboard, output analogue to active speakers which contain an amplifier and cheap speakers.

    That can be improved by using a sound card with a better DAC, some onboard amplification and/or sending the analogue signal to a better amplifier and speakers.

    Or you can use a DAC outside of the sound card - a USB one, or other external one or one built into a receiver - that means the quality of the components before the DAC don't matter so much because you are sending digital signal without much, or any, processing.

    This last case is what you are doing when you use the optical out from the motherboard/soundcard or HDMI via the graphics card - they are all just sending digital signal to something else to process, albeit sometimes encoding that signal to reduce the bandwidth of multi-channel sound. Then the quality of what you're sending it to matters most - whether that's an AV receiver or TV with its own DAC and amplifier/speakers.

    The only caveat to digital signals is that encoding - if you are encoding a surround sound standard then your device at the other end needs to be able to decode it. If it can't, you may need to do the DAC earlier and output multiple analogue channels - that's why sound cards have multiple ports for surround sound via analogue, but digital surround is just one cable.

    So that's an explanation, which lets us answer your question - is there any benefit to a higher end sound card if using HDMI (or any other digital output)? No. The only benefit is that it may support an encoding standard that you wouldn't otherwise have (and it may offload that encoding to a hardware chip rather than use CPU power - though CPU power is usually in excess for a fairly undemanding task).

    edit: HDMI has enough bandwidth that you don't need to encode multi-channels, so if using unencoded output you don't even need to worry about that aspect.
    Last edited by kalniel; 03-09-2014 at 05:13 PM.

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    Re: Soundcards Vs Dac's and HDMI

    If your outputting HDMI, then there is no need for a soundcard at all. Windows handles the audio channels internally and then maps them to the various HDMI channels. No conversion is happening and you are down to the quality of the DACs on your receiver.
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    Re: Soundcards Vs Dac's and HDMI

    Quote Originally Posted by shaithis View Post
    If your outputting HDMI, then there is no need for a soundcard at all. Windows handles the audio channels internally and then maps them to the various HDMI channels. No conversion is happening and you are down to the quality of the DACs on your receiver.
    If there is no receiver though then a sound card is required, for example plugging directly to a TV?
    And if your using it for gaming, Steam box for example then I would assume a sound card is required for any gaming related features?

    My understanding is the graphics cards do not have a sound card, rather the audio is routed internally via Spdif to the card to output over HDMI?
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    Re: Soundcards Vs Dac's and HDMI

    Cheers though guys that clears somethings up.

    Gaming wise is there any benefit from a dedicated sound card over onboard or passing to a DAC / external receiver?
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    Re: Soundcards Vs Dac's and HDMI

    Quote Originally Posted by Platinum View Post
    Its generally accepted that a USB DAC is going to produce better audio than a sound card
    A DAC is a DAC. USB is an interface. You can't make a correlation like that. You can have a crappy DAC on USB and a good one on the PCI express bus, it doesn't mean much.

    In fact, USB can have higher latency, which can be important for some applications.

    Some USB devices can be 'better' in that they're not subject to the same internal, 'harsh' environment that internal ones can be. Which can, in some cases, help cut down interference.

    Quote Originally Posted by Platinum View Post
    but as I understand it they are not great for gaming, is this right?
    Depends on the implementation / quality of it really. Latency is always the concern, along with a higher CPU overhead (not that it really matters today)


    Quote Originally Posted by Platinum View Post
    HDMI audio via the graphics card, my understanding is that the systems sound card does the audio processing and passes the signal through the graphics card and out to the TV / Reciver, again is this right?
    Yep.

    Quote Originally Posted by Platinum View Post
    If thats the case is there a benifit from a higher end sound card if your using HDMI out for the audio, its digital right so should sound the same? Guessing the benifit is from any aditional processing the card can do?
    This is where it gets a bit more complex.

    If you have 'static' content like films, the audio is already encoded into a format. The soundcard takes this and throws it down the HDMI connection. Pretty simple. The difference from one soundcard to another should be 0, unless it needs to be encoded into some other format for it to be passed (Dolby Digital for example) before hand.

    If you have dynamic content, like games, the audio is being generated on the fly within the 3D world and is subject to how the soundcard processes it. At this point, it works much like a GPU does. The soundcard will decide how that sound 2km away should sound in relation to the others in the scene, but as you can imagine, the differences between them are absolutely tiny. The thing is, the days of proprietary hardware accelerated sound implementations (like EAX) are dead, so you get pretty much the same result on any soundcard.
    Some soundcards can 'accelerate' this in terms of doing the calculations on the soundcard hardware as opposed to software (which is what most motherboard chips are doing), but the advantages for doing so are tiny (to a gamer). CPU power is in abundance.

    Some cards can 'sound' better due to better equaliser presets, higher quality audio outputs, and so on, but you can usually get a similar experience with tweaking it yourself.

    Of course, once you have the sound generated, it's passed down via digital and then your DAC processes it. This is where the real magic happens, and where you should be concentrating on for quality. You can give a rubbish DAC a perfect feed and you'll still get rubbish out.


    Quote Originally Posted by Platinum View Post
    Personal experience says to me Low end onboard sound = crappy audio
    As above, if it's going over a DAC, the soundcard basically is just shuffling data with minor / no processing.

    Quote Originally Posted by Platinum View Post
    very little amplification, decent sound card = decent audio.
    Amplification is done as part of the DAC in this context. Your amp handles this.
    If you're talking about speakers being plugged into the motherboard directly, then it just depends on the motherboard. You can have Realtek chips like the ALC898 with a good amp that will produce very high quality sound.]

    edit - arg. too long
    Last edited by Agent; 03-09-2014 at 04:45 PM.
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    Re: Soundcards Vs Dac's and HDMI

    Quote Originally Posted by Platinum View Post
    If there is no receiver though then a sound card is required, for example plugging directly to a TV?
    And if your using it for gaming, Steam box for example then I would assume a sound card is required for any gaming related features?

    My understanding is the graphics cards do not have a sound card, rather the audio is routed internally via Spdif to the card to output over HDMI?
    If you plug HDMI into the TV, then the TV is the receiver. You are at the mercy of it's DACs. The receiver would be the point at which the Digital > Analog conversion takes place, it's best that this be the highest quality part of the link (if sound quality is of high importance to you).

    If your gaming and want sound over the HDMI, again no sound card is required. In fact, if you have surround sound via HDMI, then it's better than a sound card as you don't need to use multiple analogue breakouts for each channel or encode DD5.1/DTS on the fly.

    Graphics card do not have sound cards, they just output the windows internal channels over the corresponding HDMI channel.
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    Re: Soundcards Vs Dac's and HDMI

    To clarify, my post was talking purely about sound quality, not processes involved in generating the sound in the first place. As Agent says, sound cards/chips can play a role in sound generation - digitally creating sounds or manipulating them, for eg. the sound of a gun echoing through a cave. Digitally creating sounds is quite rare these days (because it's better done on more expensive, dedicated tools) but combining and manipulating them has to be done on the fly because the game developer wants to react to what you as a player do.

    The cheapest sound chips contain some functions for this, but largely use CPU power. More expensive ones used to have hardware acceleration, but this was largely broken by the move to Vista/7. Now hardware acceleration is being allowed in Windows again and some cards may take advantage of that, as do AMD's newer graphics cards which contain digital signal processors to hardware accelerate effects and multi-channel encoding. (AMD TrueAudio)

    They will only have an effect on the quality if a developer specifies a particular feature/effect is only available on cards with hardware acceleration. I can only think they would do this for performance reasons, but I've yet to see the case on a gaming PC where the CPU didn't have spare time for this kind of thing. The situation on laptops and very low end chips *might* be different maybe? Dunno. I don't know of a recent game that requires it.

    Quote Originally Posted by Platinum View Post
    Gaming wise is there any benefit from a dedicated sound card over onboard or passing to a DAC / external receiver?
    If the game, and your windows version, supports hardware acceleration then having a dedicated DSP do the hardware acceleration (in creating the sounds) reduces the load on the CPU. This is minute compared the power of CPUs these days, and given gaming is not/should not be CPU limited anyway it's of no benefit. There maybe some additional latency in USB type solutions, but by far the bigger effect would be down to how well implemented the drivers are - these have a bigger effect, particularly on the latency of Deferred Procedure Calls which if it builds up may cause slight lagging of various things (but generally only shows in terms of stuttering audio quality). Motherboards often vary significantly in their DPC latency and if you have high latency it's often worth checking what power saving software/monitoring type software you are using.

    There may also be a touch extra latency in externally processed sounds/multi-channel decoding, but this would have no effect on your computer save the sounds might come out a fraction later.

    My recommendation - for performance of the game itself, driver choice is the biggest factor. Going for a sound card may give you access to better drivers, but on the other hand a well established motherboard based chip might also have very optimised drivers over time as well. This may change should TrueAudio take off.. I can't see that really happening too much though.

    For sound quality and gaming.. depends how important quality is to your enjoyment of the game. People seem to like trashing display quality to improve gaming so I don't think there's a clear correlation. As long as you have enough umph to play all the channels then you're fine. Oh, my sound card has a similar trashing mode to monitors - can theoretically 'enhance' the frequencies associated with footsteps etc. It's all done in software and I've no interest in even trying it.
    Last edited by kalniel; 03-09-2014 at 02:14 PM.

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    Re: Soundcards Vs Dac's and HDMI

    Quote Originally Posted by shaithis View Post
    If your gaming and want sound over the HDMI, again no sound card is required. In fact, if you have surround sound via HDMI, then it's better than a sound card as you don't need to use multiple analogue breakouts for each channel or encode DD5.1/DTS on the fly.

    Graphics card do not have sound cards, they just output the windows internal channels over the corresponding HDMI channel.
    So what's actually doing the audio processing, again my understanding was the onboard sound did it then it was passed through the GPU and out via the internal SPDIF?, this is one thing I would like to know for sure because even in this thread there are conflicting opinions?



    Cheers guys ill take a good read of this tonight and do some research.

    Currently I have a Xonar ST and ill be replacing that when I do my upgrade in a month or two as its PCI and the new board is PCI-E only, Im looking at replacing it with the Xonar STX II as I am really happy with the current card, however this is just me exploring all options and trying to get a better grip on the technology.

    Excuse the n00bishness, I am very much a n00b when it comes to Audio, if anyone can point me to any guides / datasheets ect that would be cool.
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    Re: Soundcards Vs Dac's and HDMI

    Quote Originally Posted by Platinum View Post
    So what's actually doing the audio processing, again my understanding was the onboard sound did it then it was passed through the GPU and out via the internal SPDIF?, this is one thing I would like to know for sure because even in this thread there are conflicting opinions?



    Cheers guys ill take a good read of this tonight and do some research.

    Currently I have a Xonar ST and ill be replacing that when I do my upgrade in a month or two as its PCI and the new board is PCI-E only, Im looking at replacing it with the Xonar STX II as I am really happy with the current card, however this is just me exploring all options and trying to get a better grip on the technology.

    Excuse the n00bishness, I am very much a n00b when it comes to Audio, if anyone can point me to any guides / datasheets ect that would be cool.
    Personally I'd try the onboard audio before splashing any cash. I used to buy Soublblasters and Audigies and the likes - havn't done so for years as the result is basically indistinguishable when pumped out to my midrange stereo.

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    Re: Soundcards Vs Dac's and HDMI

    Used them before on a lot of boards and found them to be terrible, the Xonar is pretty awesome, dedicated amps for the headphones is nice and I do like being able to have speakers and headphones plugged in at the same time and switch via software.
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    Re: Soundcards Vs Dac's and HDMI

    Quote Originally Posted by Platinum View Post
    So what's actually doing the audio processing, again my understanding was the onboard sound did it then it was passed through the GPU and out via the internal SPDIF?, this is one thing I would like to know for sure because even in this thread there are conflicting opinions?
    What do you mean by processing? For stereo, the creation of the digital sound is basically done by the CPU. The conversion of digital sound to analogue is done by your TV.
    Same story for surround over bandwidth limited output, like HDMI.

    For surround over a bandwidth limited output (eg spdif), the creation of the digital sound is done by the CPU, it is encoded by a sound card or the CPU, passed to your TV where it is decoded and converted to analogue sound.

    This internal SPDIF stuff is nonsense only useful for passing the output through something else without going through the CPU. AMD graphics cards are effectively sound cards so there's no benefit to using a sound card if you are outputting digitally (unless there's an encoding that your sound card supports that the GPU doesn't). nVidia went through a naff period of trying to compete by letting you pass through output from a sound card through the GPU - that just enables you to save on cabling though, in that case the GPU isn't doing anything other than putting the digital signal through an HMDI cable.
    Last edited by kalniel; 03-09-2014 at 05:15 PM.

  16. #14
    Anthropomorphic Personification shaithis's Avatar
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    Re: Soundcards Vs Dac's and HDMI

    For clarification, both my HTPCs have their on-board sound cards disabled in the BIOS and have no add-in sound card.....yet crystal clear multi-channel audio works in everything from movies to games. No addition load on the CPU, no additional hardware required, no encoding on-the-fly needed.
    Last edited by shaithis; 03-09-2014 at 04:18 PM. Reason: Spelling!
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    Re: Soundcards Vs Dac's and HDMI

    Quote Originally Posted by Platinum View Post
    Used them before on a lot of boards and found them to be terrible, the Xonar is pretty awesome, dedicated amps for the headphones is nice and I do like being able to have speakers and headphones plugged in at the same time and switch via software.
    What do you mean by terrible though? If your only requirement is the additional ports you mention, that's just a physical output issue and not really reflective of the quality of soundcard itself.

    You need to keep in mind that onboard sound is adequate for 99% of users, which is what it's designed for. It's not really fair to claim it's terrible because of some bespoke need.

    The Xonar has some nice stats regarding SNR (Although some onboard chipsets match it on higher boards) and can adjust gain depending on your headphones ohms requirement....but in terms of anything else, there isn't a lot they can do over other soundcards. If you need an amp on your soundcard, it's probably a fine choice (I had serious driver problems with mine years ago, but I'd assume they are much better now), but if you're whacking stuff to a amp via digital....these points are all irrelevant.
    Quote Originally Posted by Saracen View Post
    And by trying to force me to like small pants, they've alienated me.

  18. #16
    King of the Juice Platinum's Avatar
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    Re: Soundcards Vs Dac's and HDMI

    Fair enough, So conclusion for HDMI output sound cards are pointless then, for gaming they offer no additional benefit?
    If plugging into speakers / headphone for a PC the sound card is useful for amplification / CPU offload?
    Salazaar : <Touching wood as I write this...>


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