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Yeats
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Re: Which integrated audio is better Realtec or VIA?

Mon May 07, 2012 8:52 pm

moresmarterthanspock wrote:
I'm sorry, I just can't help myself, I need to rant about something. Audio does not belong on a video card. But then again, they've been doing this since the 80's. Joystick port on a sound card. Printer port on a video card(Hercules was guilty of this). My rant to the tech industry, keep components seperate, please. It's just a much cleaner way of doing things.


You must really hate modern video cards, damn things have 2D and 3D functionality on the same board.

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Re: Which integrated audio is better Realtec or VIA?

Mon May 07, 2012 9:13 pm

Yeats wrote:
moresmarterthanspock wrote:
I'm sorry, I just can't help myself, I need to rant about something. Audio does not belong on a video card. But then again, they've been doing this since the 80's. Joystick port on a sound card. Printer port on a video card(Hercules was guilty of this). My rant to the tech industry, keep components seperate, please. It's just a much cleaner way of doing things.


You must really hate modern video cards, damn things have 2D and 3D functionality on the same board.

And don't get me started on keyboards! Letters AND numbers?! :evil:


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Re: Which integrated audio is better Realtec or VIA?

Mon May 07, 2012 10:33 pm

If you are contemplating paying $200 or so for a card consider a stand alone DAC. You can leave the horrible computer environment digitally for a real sound quality increase. Almost any cheap DAC will just kill a sound card, especially if Creative made it.
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Re: Which integrated audio is better Realtec or VIA?

Tue May 08, 2012 2:35 am

Flying Fox wrote:
moresmarterthanspock wrote:
I'm sorry, I just can't help myself, I need to rant about something. Audio does not belong on a video card.

We have been saying for over a page that we are talking about the digital signal that does not suffer from interference from other components. The OP's setup is to use HDMI and stay digital until the signal completely leaves the computer. The D->A process will happen at the receiver. Have you been reading?

Yup... HDMI is digital until it hits the DAC in the TV; all the card needs to do is move the bits from Point A to Point B. Mixing and effects/EQ are pretty much all done in software these days too, so the audio interface on the video card is little more than a bit pipe.
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Re: Which integrated audio is better Realtec or VIA?

Tue May 08, 2012 2:37 am

PenGun wrote:
If you are contemplating paying $200 or so for a card consider a stand alone DAC. You can leave the horrible computer environment digitally for a real sound quality increase. Almost any cheap DAC will just kill a sound card, especially if Creative made it.

That said, any decent sound card (and many onboard solutions as well!) will not be the limiting factor in most peoples' PC audio setup.
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Re: Which integrated audio is better Realtec or VIA?

Tue May 08, 2012 2:45 am

just brew it! wrote:
PenGun wrote:
If you are contemplating paying $200 or so for a card consider a stand alone DAC. You can leave the horrible computer environment digitally for a real sound quality increase. Almost any cheap DAC will just kill a sound card, especially if Creative made it.

That said, any decent sound card (and many onboard solutions as well!) will not be the limiting factor in most peoples' PC audio setup.

True enough but the source, contrary to some opinion, is the most important link in your sound system. The source of all digital music is of course the DAC.
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Re: Which integrated audio is better Realtec or VIA?

Tue May 08, 2012 2:57 am

PenGun wrote:
just brew it! wrote:
PenGun wrote:
If you are contemplating paying $200 or so for a card consider a stand alone DAC. You can leave the horrible computer environment digitally for a real sound quality increase. Almost any cheap DAC will just kill a sound card, especially if Creative made it.

That said, any decent sound card (and many onboard solutions as well!) will not be the limiting factor in most peoples' PC audio setup.

True enough but the source, contrary to some opinion, is the most important link in your sound system. The source of all digital music is of course the DAC.

Heh... I'd argue that the source is the original recording. And there are quite a lot of really badly mastered recordings out there. Excessive dynamic range compression (see: Loudness Wars) FTL... :(

But I guess I'm getting rather off-topic here. :oops:
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Re: Which integrated audio is better Realtec or VIA?

Tue May 08, 2012 3:04 am

Flying Fox wrote:
I was talking about remaining digital throughout, that means not leaving the computer chassis in the 1/8" jack, but either as S/PDIF coax/optical or HDMI. The DAC will exist somewhere else. I think I trust my $400+ receiver more than a $100 sound card.


If I'm not mistaken, Optical / Digital output only uses the soundcard as a pass through device. So a shiny 150 bucks soundcard with uber specs would be totally useless unless you use onboard effects like EAX or Surround virtualization or the equalizer. But you probably have these in your receiver anyway and apply these effects there.

Personally I have the Titanium HD and wouldn't want to trade it for anything. Onboard sounds like crap on my DT 880s and since I do not own a stereo sound quality is very important to me.

The source of all digital music is of course the DAC


WRONG. The source is your file system. Even Burr Browns can't make 128Kbit MP3s sound nice. ;)

If you're using analog out DAC specs are important. If you use digital outs: see above.
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Re: Which integrated audio is better Realtec or VIA?

Tue May 08, 2012 2:40 pm

Oh my. Of course the recording is the original signal, be it digital or analog. In any sound system that does digital it is the DAC that feeds your preamp. That is of course what I meant.

That is why it is the most important link in the sound system. What kind of garbage you feed it is up to you.
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Re: Which integrated audio is better Realtec or VIA?

Tue May 08, 2012 2:46 pm

That's totally irrelevant for the OP because he's using whatever came built into his TV or AV receiver.
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