Audio Question

[Jinto]

let me get this right, you want to spent $700 on a dac and amp, but not $54 on shipping?



onboard never sounds as good as a DAC, even with ASIO 2.2

the OP's issues is that the Denon doesn't pass the 2550x1440 video signal through and only outputs 1920x1080

I highly doubt you will be able to hear the difference due to jitter between onboard and a sound card with a DT880

[Cyanotical]

I highly doubt you will be able to hear the difference due to jitter between onboard and a sound card with a DT880

tell me more about how i cant tell the difference, even though i have a DAC, a soundcard, onboard, several good pairs of headphones, and studio reference equipment

since you mentioned jitter, i can only assume that you've been reading the BS over on head-fi.org, when it comes to digital, those guys don't know their head from a hole in the ground, at least they don't recommend beats by dre

edit, not even counting the fact that DT880s are a 300ish ohm headphone and cant really be driven by a onboard soundcard (32 ohms)

[BicycleMafioso]

Let's be a bit more civil shall we? While I agree that headfi is overrated and don't deserve the credit they are given, especially in later years, there is no need for that.

[Jinto]

tell me more about how i cant tell the difference, even though i have a DAC, a soundcard, onboard, several good pairs of headphones, and studio reference equipment

since you mentioned jitter, i can only assume that you've been reading the BS over on head-fi.org, when it comes to digital, those guys don't know their head from a hole in the ground, at least they don't recommend beats by dre

edit, not even counting the fact that DT880s are a 300ish ohm headphone and cant really be driven by a onboard soundcard (32 ohms)

Lol we are talking about the OP's setup, not audio equipment e-peen. Though if you want to compare e-peen I will happily do so in another thread

Anyway I mentioned jitter as just something I thought of that could possibly affect digital audio quality. At the end of the day bits are bits. Though if you can explain to me what difference there are in optical output between a typical onboard and what the OP has I will be glad to learn from the master.

p.s. Might not have noticed the DT770 the OP has is 80ohm and I did suggest an amp regardless I admit I mistyped DT880 instead but honestly it isn't that hard to connect the dots.

[Cyanotical]

Lol we are talking about the OP's setup, not audio equipment e-peen. Though if you want to compare e-peen I will happily do so in another thread

Anyway I mentioned jitter as just something I thought of that could possibly affect digital audio quality. At the end of the day bits are bits. Though if you can explain to me what difference there are in optical output between a typical onboard and what the OP has I will be glad to learn from the master.

p.s. Might not have noticed the the DT770 the OP has is 32ohm and I did suggest an amp regardless

the OP is trying to run HDMI from the media card (its not really a pure sound card) to an AV receiver, im assuming it's to take advantage of the digital 7.1 encoding on HDMI

digital jitter is something that somebody decided to make up, it makes sense at certain levels with modulated signal waves, but with a pure digital signal it does not exist



in this image you can see the difference, digital is either on or off, there is no room for error, and any variance that could cause jitter is wiped out by the fact that anything >0 is 1, within voltage tolerances, in most digital electronics, 0 is 0 volts, and 1 is 5 volts, so tha gap is large enough that .9 volts will still register as 0

modulated signal waves can suffer from jitter, but they are only used when you need multiple digital signals on a single medium, such as cable

when it comes to audio, Coax and Optical make no difference, USB only makes a difference when there is a driver or firmware issue, HDMI has it's own standard

anyway, the op can either plug his headphones into the Denon, (which does have an amp) or use a headphone DAC and AMP, which will provide better sound because its designed to do that and is not an afterthought in design

---------- Post added 2012-11-06 at 03:11 PM ----------

Though if you can explain to me what difference there are in optical output between a typical onboard and what the OP has I will be glad to learn from the master.

onboard optical is only 2.0 unless it receives a pre-encoded digital signal, such as from a DVD or HD TV signal, for digital live you need a soundcard

[Jinto]

Did you even read my post? I posted then amended it like 3 hours before you quoted it...Please go read it again -.-".

Your point is that onboard optical lacks the features of the HDAV in outputting via Dolby Digital Live etc. That is true. However that was not what I was talking about and the 2nd part of my post addressed that. I assumed from the OP's original post that he was only interested in stereo as he only mentioned headphones which I later added to when it was obvious he has a Jamo THX set. So you quote my first part and say a sound card will sound much better than onboard which I take to mean the sound card's 0s and 1s are somehow superior to the onboard which is honestly quite laughable even assuming there are minor differences. Which is why I replied saying even if there are differences you wouldn't notice it on a DT770 80Ohm...

[Cyanotical]

Did you even read my post? I posted then amended it like 3 hours before you quoted it...Please go read it again -.-".

Your point is that onboard optical lacks the features of the HDAV in outputting via Dolby Digital Live etc. That is true. However that was not what I was talking about and the 2nd part of my post addressed that. I assumed from the OP's original post that he was only interested in stereo as he only mentioned headphones which I later added to when it was obvious he has a Jamo THX set. So you quote my first part and say a sound card will sound much better than onboard which I take to mean the sound card's 0s and 1s are somehow superior to the onboard which is honestly quite laughable even assuming there are minor differences. Which is why I replied saying even if there are differences you wouldn't notice it on a DT770 80Ohm...

the digital signal is not going to be different unless you are using an equalizer program like that on the Xonar series of soundcards, however, the difference comes in as to how the sound is processed, and in that case, a stand alone headphone grade DAC and amp is going to be vastly superior to the headphone port on the Denon, and is immensely superior to the onboard sound processor

just to make this clear, im not talking about the digital ports, im talking about the analog ones, when you use a soundcard like the xonar stx, it's going to do a much better job of delivering an analog signal to the headphones than the denon will, because the denon is not designed to be a headphone dac/amp

you're trying to split hairs on where the digital signal comes from, when you are missing the point, it has to do with where it is converted to analog, and in that you really need a good sound card with an amp to take full advantage of those headphones

also

the Denon has it's own build in headphone amp, if you want the tone of a dedicated amp, get a DAC/AMP combo or individual components

your denon is an AV reciever, the headphone amp was added as an afterthought and will never sound as good as a dedicated DAC and Amp

so it's not like i didnt address this already, sure, you can use the digital signal from the onboard port, or the digital signal from HDMI, which does have more sound channels, or you can get a dedicated DAC/Amp and get better sound from the headphones, how you want to hook up that dac is up to you, you can use the onboard toslink, or coax, or usb, but at the end of the day, the DAC is designed to output a 2 channel analog signal for headphones, the Denon is not

[Jinto]

You still didn't read my first post which you quoted lol, go read it since what you are typing up an essay about has nothing to do with what was written.

[Cyanotical]

If you are outputting digital to your Denon you are using the Denon as a DAC. Even onboard will sound absolutely identical to a super amazing sound card if the stream is bit perfect (which most onboard can do nowadays).

i assume you are refering to this

this is how i read it:
when you use a Digital line to a the Denon, is serves the function of a dac

when listening to a CD(asio 2.2), onboard is the same as a soundcard

im sure you can see why i see a major problem with this

given how much you are arguing, i can only assume that you meant this:

when you use a Digital line to a the Denon, is serves the function of a dac

when listening to music through a DAC, the digital link does not matter if it connects to a soundcard or onboard

[Jinto]

when you use a Digital line to a the Denon, is serves the function of a dac

when listening to music through a DAC, the digital link does not matter if it connects to a soundcard or onboard

Voila, now you are welcome to argue over this point.

[Cyanotical]

Voila, now you are welcome to argue over this point.

okay then:

since the OP is interested in the 7.1 digital connection, he can only get that from games when using HDMI through a digital live sound card, onboard cannot do this, i mention games because he has a GTX-670 and it is more then likely that he will be playing some games through his sound system

also, if you use a soundcard like a STX or Xense, you can still get the digital live (5.1 only), but you can color the sound before it reaches the DAC

with onboard, you can only connect to the DAC and send a signal, 99% of onboard sound is realtek which has almost no options in its sound mixing

so, not all digital links are the same

[Jinto]

okay then:

since the OP is interested in the 7.1 digital connection, he can only get that from games when using HDMI through a digital live sound card, onboard cannot do this, i mention games because he has a GTX-670 and it is more then likely that he will be playing some games through his sound system

also, if you use a soundcard like a STX or Xense, you can still get the digital live (5.1 only), but you can color the sound before it reaches the DAC

with onboard, you can only connect to the DAC and send a signal, 99% of onboard sound is realtek which has almost no options in its sound mixing

so, not all digital links are the same

Now that is a valid point. However I realized the issue 3 hours before you even quoted my post and edited the original post with different suggestions utilizing the sound card instead

You can argue that the HDAV is particularly poor in an area when used as a digital passthrough. You would have to give some concrete examples. One way or another however, it is outside the scope of the original post.