HydrogenAudio

CD-R and Audio Hardware => Audio Hardware => Topic started by: puntloos on 2003-07-28 13:27:42

Title: Soundcard digital pathways?
Post by: puntloos on 2003-07-28 13:27:42
I was wondering,

If you use a soundcard's digital out and tell it not to equalize/eax/otherprocessing, is the digital quality 'perfect'?

Case in point I have a professional DSP hooked up to my SB audigy's digital out. If I were to upgrade the audigy (not that I have the $$$ but for argument's sake  ), would I get any improvement in the sound quality of my mpc audio playback?

Basically I hear some 'stories' from people that say 'yes' to the last question but I find it hard to believe that the digital ".wav" data from winamp would get distorted by the sound card that's hooked up to it. provided of course I don't use the onboard DAC's or some hardware DSP feature like resampling or spatialisation crap, but Im telling my computer to have all EQ's off and just play back the file.

Anyone know the answer here?
Title: Soundcard digital pathways?
Post by: AstralStorm on 2003-07-28 13:36:48
Digital should be, well, bit identical.
But..,
Some crappy soundcards, like SB Live (don't know about Audigy1 and 2) do resampling even on digital output.
Title: Soundcard digital pathways?
Post by: jrbamford on 2003-07-28 14:02:43
then there is the kmixer and other filters that windows does.. or does it!?!?

I took the brave step of installing the kx drivers for the soundblaster family... they enable ASIO support which in theory is straight out.. I've gotten it working in foobar and would swear that i could hear a difference... not done an informal ABX test to that length, and i'm well aware that the big ugly placebo monster could be knocking at my door...

the kx drivers needed a full reinstall of windows to get in properly... there is a lot of complicated things in the drivers but on the whole its all working... I'd recommend it if you are up for a reinstall... after all its only another reinstall till you can reset it all
Title: Soundcard digital pathways?
Post by: Pio2001 on 2003-07-28 21:04:20
It's very difficult to get a perfect digital playback on a PC.
Most of the times, you play 44.1 kHz and get 48 kHz instead in the digital output. And the conversion is lossy.

You can rule out all soundcards by Creative, Turtle beach, or Hercules (exept maybe used with ASIO support, like jrbamford says). The 24/96 soundcards by M-Audio and Terratec support perfect digital playback in Windows 98/me. Not sure about 2000.

Things get worse with Windows XP. In addition of one of the above cards, you'll need a player and a soundcard supporting ASIO (and/or Kernel streaming ?).

I know that some people here have studied this matter deeply and they'll certainly complete or correct these infos.

FWIW, I've got a Marian Marc 2, surprisingly capable of playing perfect digital in WinXP (as advertised), but the drivers are, well, barely drivers. DirectSound support is broken, no midi, no CD input, no gaming possible... I've heard (in here too, but I'm too lazy to search the post) that a very good soundcard, by RME, has similar drivers.
Title: Soundcard digital pathways?
Post by: Patsoe on 2003-07-28 21:23:16
Quote
It's very difficult to get a perfect digital playback on a PC.
Most of the times, you play 44.1 kHz and get 48 kHz instead in the digital output. And the conversion is lossy.

You can rule out all soundcards by Creative, Turtle beach, or Hercules (exept maybe used with ASIO support, like jrbamford says).

The Creative cards don't do 44.1kHz even with Asio-playback. It's even worse: "...if the input stream frequency is already 48000, it is still resampled in order to avoid possible synchronization issues..." taken from http://kxproject.spb.ru/direct.php?language=en (http://kxproject.spb.ru/direct.php?language=en)

Quote
The 24/96 soundcards by M-Audio and Terratec support perfect digital playback in Windows 98/me. Not sure about 2000.

Win2k is just about as crappy in that as WinXP. In Win2k, kmixer first appeared.

Quote
FWIW, I've got a Marian Marc 2, surprisingly capable of playing perfect digital in WinXP (as advertised), but the drivers are, well, barely drivers. DirectSound support is broken, no midi, no CD input, no gaming possible... I've heard (in here too, but I'm too lazy to search the post) that a very good soundcard, by RME, has similar drivers.

Yes, afaik only Marian and RME have this feature in their drivers (well, actually, they just rewrote part of the sound-interface of NT5).
Directsound is indeed very crappy with Marian drivers. But on my Marc2 there was a cd-input, actually...? (I sold it by the way, and got a Terratec 6fire at the same price ) Gaming isn't an option on RME cards either...
Title: Soundcard digital pathways?
Post by: puntloos on 2003-07-28 22:48:23
Quote
It's very difficult to get a perfect digital playback on a PC.
Most of the times, you play 44.1 kHz and get 48 kHz instead in the digital output. And the conversion is lossy.

One question about this: I can say for a fact (my DSP says so) that the Audigy digital out is providing 44Khz.

Are you saying that inside the Audigy it is converting up to 48 for some sync reason, then down to 44 again? 
Title: Soundcard digital pathways?
Post by: jrbamford on 2003-07-28 22:55:09
apparently somewhere on avsforum there is a technique of embedding a DTS stream in a wave and playing it to verify whether its bit-wise identical.. ie.. whether your cinema processor is capable of decoding a DTS signal by the time the wave reaches it... i'll try to find links..

Patsoe.. arse thanks for the info.. i'd missed that.. that its resampled AGAIN even if its 48khz is annoying.. I will be jumping ship to another soundcard at some point i think.. i will have to be careful tho as along with occasional games (especially half-life 2 soon) i want perfect music, and perfect cinema sound.. by perfect i just want it working, no glitches, no lip sync issues etc...

I DO believe i can hear a difference between ASIO output of foobar and everything else.. BUT i also do wonder about the placebo of it all... but its enough to make me think that i'd like to have a card that leaves it untouched..

again some post on avsforum was talking about a soundcard which bypasses kmixer with waveout and directsound.. not sure how its possible... i will try to get the link for you more knowledgable types to digest
Title: Soundcard digital pathways?
Post by: AstralStorm on 2003-07-28 23:06:57
Bypassing kmixer is possible with DirectSound.
The soundcard just needs to support hardware mixing.

Kernel Streaming also bypasses kmixer.

ASIO bypasses everything and works great, but sound gets nuked on high HDD usage
regardless of buffer size
Also it emits noise when another application tries to use sound device.
Title: Soundcard digital pathways?
Post by: Patsoe on 2003-07-28 23:40:03
@jrbamford: I was re-reading the link I provided, and noticed that it is explicitly about recording from SPDIF-in. Before, I concluded this would be so for all audio-streams on the board, but perhaps that's not true for the outputs...?

@pointless: what drivers are you using? If the DSP says its 44kHz, then it is, I'd think. Interesting.
Title: Soundcard digital pathways?
Post by: puntloos on 2003-07-28 23:58:49
Quote from: Patsoe,Jul 28 2003, 02:40 PM
@jrbamford: I was re-reading the link I provided, and noticed that it is explicitly about recording from SPDIF-in. Before, I concluded this would be so for all audio-streams on the board, but perhaps that's not true for the outputs...?

Indeed. I noticed that too.

Im already registring at the KX forums to ask this exact question

@pointless: what drivers are you using? If the DSP says its 44kHz, then it is, I'd think. Interesting.[/QUOTE]

Oh it is, no doubt about it. The only question is, is it 44 from 'winamp' to 'spdif out' or is the silly audigy coding from 44 -> 48 -> 44 -> out. Incidentally all standard audigy drivers have a the spdif hardware output setting window.. its in the eh.. well haha I forget the name (not behind my own computer right now) some audio control panel with a green print board as logo.

In that last case (44-48-44) it'll be smarter for me to set my DSP to 48khz...
Title: Soundcard digital pathways?
Post by: jrbamford on 2003-07-29 00:09:00
puntloos.. if you can afford possible reinstall i'd say give the kx drivers a whirl.. i am very happy now... and enabling ASIO with foobar as i said i think helps the quality... i'll be interested to find out if the output is resampled.. hopefully not..

ASIO does nuke with heavy usage.. funnily too... occasional crackle but i actually got the music slowing down over 20 seconds when installing something the other day... how can you use ASIO with load with music packages if this stuff happens on playing to just 1 channel

Need to find out in foobar where the ASIO latency settings are.. programs like cubase allow you to get to the kx drivers latency window.. i dont know how to do this within foobar... latency being higher helps for stability and for just plain playback i assume latency can be fairly large.. i aint planning on any mixing..
Title: Soundcard digital pathways?
Post by: AstralStorm on 2003-07-29 03:32:26
Sorry, even setting latency to 512samples/sec (max - 12msec at 44.1kHz)
in my Aureon Space card control haven't solved the problem...
Reduced it slightly. (I get a buzz - higher latency = shorter buzz.)
Title: Soundcard digital pathways?
Post by: puntloos on 2003-07-29 03:37:28
It would be cool if you could switch between the two drivers without rebooting.....
Title: Soundcard digital pathways?
Post by: dgover2 on 2003-07-29 04:57:03
Quote
Bypassing kmixer is possible with DirectSound.
The soundcard just needs to support hardware mixing.


Now I'm even more confused than ever because Terratec tell me my DMX 6Fire doesn't resample unless I enable Sensaura 3D, but hardware mixing is only available when Sensaura 3D is enabled.

-dave
Title: Soundcard digital pathways?
Post by: Halcyon on 2003-07-29 07:55:35
Let me try and summarise (please correct if I'm wrong):

- All Creative cards resample their PCM bitstream digital output to 48kHz (or interim 48kz before outputting 44kHz). This cannot be circumvented with any drivers. DTS 44.1kHz is not PCM bitstream, it's raw and can be outputted 1:1 bit perfect on some Creative cards.

- On most cards, even 48kHz output data gets resampled to 48kHz causing jitter and requantisation errors (noise and distortion). This is due to the PCM data being fed through KMixer (on W2K or later). RME and Marian sound card drivers know how to bypass this. Kernel Streaming drivers for some cards know how to bypass this (?)

- Terratec DMX6fire can output 44.1kHz digitally bit perfect as 44.1kHz without resampling. I've tested this myself. Sorry! Can't remember if Sensaura was on or off (I *think* OFF, but can't be sure anymore).

Am I completely off the mark? I need to understand these too. I could test Audigy2, but lack proper cabling right now.

regards,
Halcyon
Title: Soundcard digital pathways?
Post by: KikeG on 2003-07-29 08:58:10
Waveout is bit-perfect on Win9X, given that the mixer sliders are set at max. On Win2K and WinXP, kmixer prevents bit-perfect output unless: 1) you use kernel streaming or ASIO. 2) you have a card that supports hardware acceleration and also set wave sliders at max. I haven't totally corroborated 2) yet, but there's some evidence from other people that this is true.

But all this is only true in case of non-resampling cards when playing 44.1 KHz data. Resampling cards will always mangle 44.1 KHz data no matter what you do.

http://www.hydrogenaudio.org/forums/index....topic=5755&st=0 (http://www.hydrogenaudio.org/forums/index.php?showtopic=5755&st=0)
Title: Soundcard digital pathways?
Post by: puntloos on 2006-08-07 13:46:57
Bump!

(hah.. 3 year old topic..)

Guys, Im STILL struggling with this question, and since Im now trying to put together an audiophile stereo, this issue has gained a lot of importance to me.

therefore, the question rephrased:

What are the settings/drivers etc with which I can make my sound blaster audigy output an EXACT digital copy of the digital data winamp (or foobar2k) outputs. I do NOT want it to resample etc etc
add: if impossible, please suggest a soundcard that CAN do this properly
Title: Soundcard digital pathways?
Post by: CSMR on 2006-08-07 14:45:32
What are you doing with Quad speakers and an Audigy sound card?!
Title: Soundcard digital pathways?
Post by: odyssey on 2006-08-07 15:06:02
add: if impossible, please suggest a soundcard that CAN do this properly


- Terratec DMX6fire can output 44.1kHz digitally bit perfect as 44.1kHz without resampling. I've tested this myself. Sorry! Can't remember if Sensaura was on or off (I *think* OFF, but can't be sure anymore).


Am I missing someting?
Title: Soundcard digital pathways?
Post by: probedb on 2006-08-07 15:26:25
What are the settings/drivers etc with which I can make my sound blaster audigy output an EXACT digital copy of the digital data winamp (or foobar2k) outputs. I do NOT want it to resample etc etc
add: if impossible, please suggest a soundcard that CAN do this properly


I don't think you can from reading the other replies. ALL soundblaster cards resample in hardware.

Thing is a cheap card like the Chaintech AV710 will do bit-perfect. It has no ASIO drivers so download ASIO4ALL and use that as the ASIO driver...worked fine for me though for some reason occasionally it didn't click in but that was an old version of ASIO4ALL and I haven't had the card for a while now. Also it's only optical out if that's a problem? But it did work and you'll find various threads on here and avsforum about it.
Title: Soundcard digital pathways?
Post by: Axon on 2006-08-07 15:28:12
BTW, I have an RME DIGI96/8 PAD, and I can attest to the no-resampling policy of the drivers. I can also say that the drivers kind of suck. They do not support standby or suspend/resume (the card loses all I/O if you go into standby), and they haven't been updated in like 3-5 years or so. Granted, the card is obsoleted, and the drivers are very minimalistically built, but still....
Title: Soundcard digital pathways?
Post by: puntloos on 2006-08-07 15:45:37
Am I missing someting?


Yes. You're missing the 'I haven't tested this myself' bit. Id like to be SURE that the card does it properly before I buy it.

What are you doing with Quad speakers and an Audigy sound card?!

Well obviously Im not skimping on component quality but if the audigy does what it needs to do it is fine for my purposes. I have no use for audiophile DA convertors (or whatever) on the sound card, all I need is a bit-perfect digital out (and perhaps optimized, high-quality volume resampling.. but winamp can do that for me, right?)

Anyway in the end I would like to hear about a normal card with proper drivers that CERTAINLY does bit-perfect output. So far Ive heard quite a few 'possibly maybe hopefully'-s.. however those terratecs might be the way to go

(Im considering to put the new card next to the audigy btw, sounds like a useful plan to have one digital perfect card that only gets used for winamp, and having the audigy make 'windows sounds' ('DING' sucks at high volumes through my 989s )
Title: Soundcard digital pathways?
Post by: CSMR on 2006-08-07 15:48:53
I think all so-called professional or semi-professional cards can give you bit perfect output through ASIO. They can also output windows sounds. No need to have two cards.
Title: Soundcard digital pathways?
Post by: puntloos on 2006-08-07 15:56:53
Plus oh yeah the terratec DMX6fire isn't being sold anymore

I think all so-called professional or semi-professional cards can give you bit perfect output through ASIO. They can also output windows sounds. No need to have two cards.


Well no I mean I DONT want them to output 'ding'  If I have 2 soundcards, I can tell windows to 'ding' on the soundblaster and have winamp(foobar) be the only app to send audio to the pro card and into my main speakers.

Could someone perhaps LIST us a few pro cards that don't need wonky ASIO drivers, work dependably, dont have 7.1 surround recording etc etc?

I need:
- stereo
- 24bits/192Khz
- Preferrably but not explicitly necessary: good DA convertors
- and the main requirement: bitperfect digital out

That's all. Assuming those demands are met, the cheapest possible card fits my bill.
Title: Soundcard digital pathways?
Post by: probedb on 2006-08-07 16:06:46
Did everyone just ignore me? I mentioned a $25 card that does bit-perfect out....
Title: Soundcard digital pathways?
Post by: puntloos on 2006-08-07 16:15:06
Did everyone just ignore me? I mentioned a $25 card that does bit-perfect out....


I didn't ignore you, but you said I needed to download some weird ASIO driver to make it work...
Title: Soundcard digital pathways?
Post by: odyssey on 2006-08-07 16:34:21

Am I missing someting?


Yes. You're missing the 'I haven't tested this myself' bit. Id like to be SURE that the card does it properly before I buy it.

On the other hand I think you are missing a pair of glasses!

- Terratec DMX6fire can output 44.1kHz digitally bit perfect as 44.1kHz without resampling. I've tested this myself. Sorry! Can't remember if Sensaura was on or off (I *think* OFF, but can't be sure anymore).


Did everyone just ignore me? I mentioned a $25 card that does bit-perfect out....

But did you test it? LOL

I didn't ignore you, but you said I needed to download some weird ASIO driver to make it work...

If you already found your glasses, go to some obscure website called www.google.com (http://www.google.com) and enter "ASIO4ALL".
Title: Soundcard digital pathways?
Post by: puntloos on 2006-08-07 17:38:14


Am I missing someting?


Yes. You're missing the 'I haven't tested this myself' bit. Id like to be SURE that the card does it properly before I buy it.

On the other hand I think you are missing a pair of glasses!

No, that card is impossible to get (well maybe 2nd hand) - out of production.
Quote

- Terratec DMX6fire can output 44.1kHz digitally bit perfect as 44.1kHz without resampling. I've tested this myself. Sorry! Can't remember if Sensaura was on or off (I *think* OFF, but can't be sure anymore).


Did everyone just ignore me? I mentioned a $25 card that does bit-perfect out....

But did you test it? LOL

Well it is mildly important.. is this 'direct passthrough digital' seems to be a fringe requirement that a lot of soundcard makers put in the feature list as an afterthought. I don't want to end up with a dud..
Quote

I didn't ignore you, but you said I needed to download some weird ASIO driver to make it work...

If you already found your glasses, go to some obscure website called www.google.com (http://www.google.com) and enter "ASIO4ALL".

I never said I couldn't find it, I said the drivers sounded dicey, I prefer something that does what I want out of the box rather than depend on some 3rd party freeware project that might or not work. Are there no soundcards with drivers that 'Just Do It' ??
Title: Soundcard digital pathways?
Post by: Rotareneg on 2006-08-07 17:43:51
Creative X-Fi cards let you select the master clock frequency, including 44.1 kHz, and also have a bit-perfect mode in "audio creation" mode.
Title: Soundcard digital pathways?
Post by: puntloos on 2006-08-07 18:13:33
Creative X-Fi cards let you select the master clock frequency, including 44.1 kHz, and also have a bit-perfect mode in "audio creation" mode.


Hmm that's a good tip, maybe I should just buy that one then.

I have been looking at the http://www.m-audio.com/products/en_us/Revo...on51-focus.html (http://www.m-audio.com/products/en_us/Revolution51-focus.html) Revolution 5.1 from m-audio too.. it sounds capable...
Title: Soundcard digital pathways?
Post by: puntloos on 2006-08-07 18:25:23
krt. leave it to creative to be extra-super-fuzzy about what output formats its digital output module supports.

For one I would need the 'platinum' to even get digital out, but also (or the extrememusic with optional breakout module). But secondly while browsing the specs I get the impression that while the X-Fi's DACs do indeed support 192Khz, its digital out only reaches 96.
Code: [Select]
24-bit Analog-to-Digital conversion of analog inputs: 96kHz sampling rate
24-bit Digital-to-Analog conversion of digital sources: 96khz to analog 7.1 speaker output
24-bit Digital-to-Analog conversion of stereo digital sources:     192kHz to stereo output
16-bit to 24-bit recording sampling rates: 8, 11.025, 16, 22.05, 24, 32, 44.1, 48 and 96kHz
ASIO 2.0 support: 16-bit/44.1kHz, 16-bit/48kHz, 24-bit/44.1kHz, 24-bit/48kHz and 24-bit/96kHz with direct monitoring


Plus the platinum is 2x as expensive as the m-audio..

Now all I need to do is find out 'for sure' that the m-audio does what I want, direct-audio-wise.

It does say 'ASIO 2.0 support'. Is that an automatic confirmation there? Or doesnt that mean anything for bit-exact output?
Title: Soundcard digital pathways?
Post by: HotshotGG on 2006-08-07 18:42:35
Quote
Now all I need to do is find out 'for sure' that the m-audio does what I want, direct-audio-wise.

It does say 'ASIO 2.0 support'. Is that an automatic confirmation there? Or doesnt that mean anything for bit-exact output?


Yep ASIO 2.0 support. I have one. 192 kHz in two-channel mode. It's not low-latency however though. I don't really see why you would need a sampling rate that high anyway. 96 kHz is great for surround sound, other than that. 

Quote
krt. leave it to creative to be extra-super-fuzzy about what output formats its digital output module supports.


I wouldn't do business with a company that short changes people personally and let's keep it at that 
Title: Soundcard digital pathways?
Post by: puntloos on 2006-08-07 18:55:02
Quote
Now all I need to do is find out 'for sure' that the m-audio does what I want, direct-audio-wise.

It does say 'ASIO 2.0 support'. Is that an automatic confirmation there? Or doesnt that mean anything for bit-exact output?


Yep ASIO 2.0 support. I have one. 192 kHz in two-channel mode. It's not low-latency however though. I don't really see why you would need a sampling rate that high anyway. 96 kHz is great for surround sound, other than that. 


Well yes but the high end audio formats of the future (DTS audio, SACD, DVD-A) sometimes do have 192Khz versions already. I don't want to be left in the lurch the moment those start becoming commonplace.
Quote
Quote
krt. leave it to creative to be extra-super-fuzzy about what output formats its digital output module supports.


I wouldn't do business with a company that short changes people personally and let's keep it at that 

I tend to agree, creative isn't a company I respect that much. Every sound card they've ever brought out has some type of weird compromise, be it in the output (hiss on SB128) drivers (live) or in the hardware (48Khz resample - audigy)

Their whole driver arrangement blows too.. lots and lots of insane checks. You can only install upgrade X if you have drivers Y with setting Z.. Basically if you don't have your original driver CD you're out of luck for a LOT of features. Well.. this is kinda off-topic, sorry. End of Rant.
Title: Soundcard digital pathways?
Post by: CSMR on 2006-08-07 19:04:45
Well no I mean I DONT want them to output 'ding'  If I have 2 soundcards, I can tell windows to 'ding' on the soundblaster and have winamp(foobar) be the only app to send audio to the pro card and into my main speakers.

Of course. You choose this via the software in some way. For my E-MU card you have a wav (windows) input and an asio input and can direct these to whatever outputs you want and switch very easily between settings. Other cards will work in different ways.
Quote
I need:
- stereo
- 24bits/192Khz
- Preferrably but not explicitly necessary: good DA convertors
- and the main requirement: bitperfect digital out

That's all. Assuming those demands are met, the cheapest possible card fits my bill.

Certainly the E-MU 0404 and 1212m will fit this well. Many others will also, but E-MUs are what I am familiar with.
Title: Soundcard digital pathways?
Post by: puntloos on 2006-08-07 22:30:03
Quote
I need:
- stereo
- 24bits/192Khz
- Preferrably but not explicitly necessary: good DA convertors
- and the main requirement: bitperfect digital out

That's all. Assuming those demands are met, the cheapest possible card fits my bill.

Certainly the E-MU 0404 and 1212m will fit this well. Many others will also, but E-MUs are what I am familiar with.


Sadly, actually the 0404 does NOT have a 192Khz digital out, and the 1212 is very expensive..
Title: Soundcard digital pathways?
Post by: Patsoe on 2006-08-07 23:16:35
Actually, I think there is officially no such thing as 192kHz SPDIF output.

If you look at RME's website, in some of their product descriptions they mention that they are the only company that provides 192kHz over SPDIF. I assume this also means that you can only make use of it when connecting to RME devices...
Title: Soundcard digital pathways?
Post by: puntloos on 2006-08-08 00:25:47
Actually, I think there is officially no such thing as 192kHz SPDIF output.

If you look at RME's website, in some of their product descriptions they mention that they are the only company that provides 192kHz over SPDIF. I assume this also means that you can only make use of it when connecting to RME devices...


Nah, Ive been looking into this a bit, and I think that in theory there are no limits to the format, khz-wise. It is limited to 24bits, but that's fine. The 'clock speed' and 'data speed' are free to choose, all that needs to happen is that the receiving device can keep up of course. Fact is that the m-audio 5.1 does it, and also the e-mu 1212m.

I need to look closely at the m-audio since its 3x as cheap as the e-mu. It lacks a lot of inputs/outputs but it does have a fully featured spdif out, which is really all I want. Plus (obviously) it needs to be able to do the bit-identical thing we spoke about. Hotshot says he got that to work, so Im quite hopeful but Ill read up a touch more.. no need to rush.
Title: Soundcard digital pathways?
Post by: odyssey on 2006-08-08 11:36:06
For one I would need the 'platinum' to even get digital out, but also (or the extrememusic with optional breakout module).

No you don't  But i definately agree with you that the specs are VERY confusing. Thing is, you get digital-out from the so called "flexi-jack" connector - Buy a mono minijack-phono converter, and you're all set!  I'm sure even the cheapest models have the flexi-jack, but they hide it to promote the bigger models i guess. I have the fatality model myself.
Title: Soundcard digital pathways?
Post by: Night Rain on 2006-08-08 12:59:02
Never mind. Didn't see the post above.
Title: Soundcard digital pathways?
Post by: jvs on 2006-08-14 23:20:47
@puntloos:
Why don't you buy an ESI Juli@? This is considered a very good card with bit-perfect drivers that work without hassle with any audio player software. I use ESI drivers with my Chaintech AV-710 and I am very pleased with the performance. If you want coaxial digital out without a breakout cable you may choose the ESI Maya 44 instead of the Juli@. Both cards are around $100.
Title: Soundcard digital pathways?
Post by: master on 2006-08-15 23:09:14
Sadly, actually the 0404 does NOT have a 192Khz digital out, and the 1212 is very expensive..

If my memory serve me correctly, the latest driver from EMU enable the support of 192kHz for 0404.

I don't think you can from reading the other replies. ALL soundblaster cards resample in hardware.

This statement is wrong. Please stop giving false information.
Title: Soundcard digital pathways?
Post by: Sebastian Mares on 2006-08-15 23:49:13
I am somewhat confused now - Pio said that Hercules do resample. So, my Fortissimo 4 resamples? Some people on these forums told me that this specific card does not resample. Also, the driver allows me to set the output frequency (44.1, 48, 96 and 192) - if I set it to 44.1, does this mean that the card still resamples?
Title: Soundcard digital pathways?
Post by: Patsoe on 2006-08-16 00:04:41
I am somewhat confused now - Pio said that Hercules do resample. So, my Fortissimo 4 resamples? Some people on these forums told me that this specific card does not resample. Also, the driver allows me to set the output frequency (44.1, 48, 96 and 192) - if I set it to 44.1, does this mean that the card still resamples?


Are you referring to this?

You can rule out all soundcards by Creative, Turtle beach, or Hercules (exept maybe used with ASIO support, like jrbamford says). The 24/96 soundcards by M-Audio and Terratec support perfect digital playback in Windows 98/me. Not sure about 2000.


That was in 2003, there was no Fortissimo4 back then
Title: Soundcard digital pathways?
Post by: Sebastian Mares on 2006-08-16 00:23:46
Ah, right. Didn't they use Cirrus Logic back then?
Title: Soundcard digital pathways?
Post by: puntloos on 2006-08-21 15:39:37
If my memory serve me correctly, the latest driver from EMU enable the support of 192kHz for 0404.

I've recently received a mail from EMU support confirming your statement. the 0404 will now do 192Khz.

Personally I've just ordered the M-Audio revolution 5.1. I am assuming that it will do what I want. (24/192)

I do have another question though..

But I'll ask it in a new topic:
Perfect (digital) Volume Control? (http://www.hydrogenaudio.org/forums/index.php?showtopic=47597)
Title: Soundcard digital pathways?
Post by: odyssey on 2006-08-22 21:32:14
Creative X-Fi cards let you select the master clock frequency, including 44.1 kHz, and also have a bit-perfect mode in "audio creation" mode.

I just tried to enable bit-matched playback on my X-fi (on x64), however i think theres a fault in the driver because I get 48khz output on every material i try to playback. I tried contacting Creative about this, but have not yet got an informative answer.
Title: Soundcard digital pathways?
Post by: puntloos on 2006-08-23 10:33:58
Well I've bought the M-Audio Revolution 5.1.

And weeeee have playback. Im fairly disappointed by the lack of controls though. The driver dates back to 2004 as well. Some things I noticed:

- To even enable the digital out, you need to select digital speakers.. fair enough, though it would've been nice if they would MENTION this somewhere in the manuals.
- There's no way to CONTROL the digital out. Im surprised it even chose 44K/16bits. I would like to be able to manually set, and check this.
- ASIO doesn't work. I'm using winamp's asio plugin, I can select m-audio asio (which came with the driver), it says it plays, but the digital audio doesn't actually leave the card. (also the VU-meters don't light up like they do with normal playback)
- ASIO4ALL doesn't improve things. It also gets confused about the m-audio, says its a beyond spec card, says its input doesnt work, says it works now.. *boggle*
- Curiously, when I played a 48Khz mp3 (hah i didnt even realise it was 48k!), the card stayed at 44Khz SPDIF mode, but the clock was skewed! My DAC's spdif sync led got very confused.. blink.. blinkblink.. blinkity... <black> .. blink.. at least it sounded fine.
- Tried with foobar2k, no joy. Didn't try foobar's ASIO plugin yet.

Again, so far Im mixed about the whole deal and the $80 I paid for the card.
Title: Soundcard digital pathways?
Post by: 2Bdecided on 2006-08-23 11:14:02
You know all this bitperfect stuff?

While I agree that you don't want your soundcard mangling what's sent to it, I'm not sure bit-perfect output of 44.1kHz sampled content is the best you can do.

If you're as concerned about sound quality as puntloos says, surely it's much better (at least in theory) to resample to 96kHz 24bits using a high quality resampler (e.g. those in foobar2k) and send that to your sound card. (Obviously you want the 24/96 fb2k output to be transferred, bit perfect, via the sound card to your outboard DAC).

I'm not claiming an audible difference, but there's certainly a measurable difference. You get a very sharp anti-alias filter at 22.05kHz - much better than you'll find in any DAC, even those with serious oversampling included.


Sorry you're having trouble puntloos. The M-audio cards do integrate into windows differently from many other cards, specifically to allow propper control and bit-perfect output. On my audiophile 2496, it's all quite logical. You need to send output to the digital output to get digital output because it's a separate output. I don't have any further insights though - I haven't used ASIO.

Cheers,
David.
Title: Soundcard digital pathways?
Post by: puntloos on 2006-08-23 11:33:54
I have to make one admission here.. my DAC is the 'weakest link' in the chain, in one very relevant way: It only supports 44/48Khz. I am not quite sure but I do think it does supports higher bit depths than '16'. This is why I hoped I could change bitdepth somewhere in the m-audio controls.

For me the most relevant thing is that as 2BDecided said, I would like winamp to decode the mp3, then either:

1/ at 100% volume, pass it on to the output bit-perfect.
2/ if winamp is required to do stuff (attenuate?),  immediately upsample, do 'some processing' and only downsample/dither at the last possible moment.
Title: Soundcard digital pathways?
Post by: cabbagerat on 2006-08-23 13:10:28
If you're as concerned about sound quality as puntloos says, surely it's much better (at least in theory) to resample to 96kHz 24bits using a high quality resampler (e.g. those in foobar2k) and send that to your sound card. (Obviously you want the 24/96 fb2k output to be transferred, bit perfect, via the sound card to your outboard DAC).

I'm not claiming an audible difference, but there's certainly a measurable difference. You get a very sharp anti-alias filter at 22.05kHz - much better than you'll find in any DAC, even those with serious oversampling included.
Oversampling DACs will reduce the effect of the anti-alias filter so much that I would doubt that there is a signficant difference in performance of the filter versus a software SRC algorithm. I really don't think you are going to gain quality by resampling in software if your DAC is well designed.
Title: Soundcard digital pathways?
Post by: 2Bdecided on 2006-08-23 13:49:39
Oversampling DACs will reduce the effect of the anti-alias filter so much that I would doubt that there is a signficant difference in performance of the filter versus a software SRC algorithm. I really don't think you are going to gain quality by resampling in software if your DAC is well designed.


I don't disagree, but there are measureable differences.

puntloos has already gone way past "audible differences"!

Cheers,
David.


I have to make one admission here.. my DAC is the 'weakest link' in the chain, in one very relevant way: It only supports 44/48Khz. I am not quite sure but I do think it does supports higher bit depths than '16'. This is why I hoped I could change bitdepth somewhere in the m-audio controls.


Hang on a moment - you have 192kHz 24-bit DACs in the M-audio card, don't you?

Whether they sound better, worse, or the same as the DAC you're currently using is something you can test.

The M-audio cards will (often) reproduce exactly what they're sent. Therefore, if you want 24-bits, you've got to send them 24-bits (e.g. from foobar2k).

Of course, if the source is 16-bits, then it doesn't matter whether you send 16-bits, or 16-bits plus eight extra zeros (i.e. 24-bits!) - IIRC (which I might not) if you look at how SPDIF works, you'll find that it's exactly the same stream either way.

If your DAC only supports 16 bits, and you send 24, then it will just ignore the bottom 8. This is truncation without dither. If the original was more than 16-bits (or has been processed into more than 16-bits - e.g. resampling, gain change etc) then this is worse than what you started with.

Cheers,
David.
Title: Soundcard digital pathways?
Post by: puntloos on 2006-08-23 16:46:22

Oversampling DACs will reduce the effect of the anti-alias filter so much that I would doubt that there is a signficant difference in performance of the filter versus a software SRC algorithm. I really don't think you are going to gain quality by resampling in software if your DAC is well designed.


I don't disagree, but there are measureable differences.

puntloos has already gone way past "audible differences"!

-heh- well, yeah, maybe in each individual instance I am being a bit (?) picky. Still, we are talking about a long audio chain here, and differences have a tendency to amplify eachother. My goal is to optimize each step, within certain reason. Wether or not I'm entering into insanity already is up for debate, perhaps?
Quote

I have to make one admission here.. my DAC is the 'weakest link' in the chain, in one very relevant way: It only supports 44/48Khz. I am not quite sure but I do think it does supports higher bit depths than '16'. This is why I hoped I could change bitdepth somewhere in the m-audio controls.


Hang on a moment - you have 192kHz 24-bit DACs in the M-audio card, don't you?

Yes.
Quote
Whether they sound better, worse, or the same as the DAC you're currently using is something you can test.

Well see your own point (and my response) about audible differences.. anyway well my current DAC is a 'pro studio device', which was amongst the best in its class when it was built. Wether or not a 'crappy' 192k/24b dac would still sound better than this one is debatable at least. Not saying that the m-audio one is bad, I just don't know.

Additionally, my computer is (fan noise!) in another room than my stereo. I prefer to transport the sound across those 15 metres digitally instead of the old fashion way, and DA-convert at the last possible moment.

Yes, I plan to compare the two setups at some point.

Quote
The M-audio cards will (often) reproduce exactly what they're sent. Therefore, if you want 24-bits, you've got to send them 24-bits (e.g. from foobar2k).

Of course, if the source is 16-bits, then it doesn't matter whether you send 16-bits, or 16-bits plus eight extra zeros (i.e. 24-bits!) - IIRC (which I might not) if you look at how SPDIF works, you'll find that it's exactly the same stream either way.

If your DAC only supports 16 bits, and you send 24, then it will just ignore the bottom 8. This is truncation without dither. If the original was more than 16-bits (or has been processed into more than 16-bits - e.g. resampling, gain change etc) then this is worse than what you started with.

True enough.. hence my personal current goal which is to switch up to 24bits if I intend to attenuate the signal, then dither back, and send it bitdirect when I don't attenuate. (see our replaygain discussion on why Im considering attenuating in the first place  )
Title: Soundcard digital pathways?
Post by: Patsoe on 2006-08-23 17:03:14
...anyway well my current DAC is a 'pro studio device', which was amongst the best in its class when it was built.


Getting really curious here: what DAC is it?
Title: Soundcard digital pathways?
Post by: puntloos on 2006-08-23 17:21:32

...anyway well my current DAC is a 'pro studio device', which was amongst the best in its class when it was built.


Getting really curious here: what DAC is it?


A Philips IS 5022
Title: Soundcard digital pathways?
Post by: puntloos on 2006-08-23 18:16:57
If your DAC only supports 16 bits, and you send 24, then it will just ignore the bottom 8. This is truncation without dither. If the original was more than 16-bits (or has been processed into more than 16-bits - e.g. resampling, gain change etc) then this is worse than what you started with.


Here's an interesting piece of info: I just looked it up, and my DAC (an IS-5022 by Philips) actually supports 20bit inputs. Would sending this DAC a 24bit signal (which then gets truncated, I assume) result in worse quality than 16bit dithered? Of course, this question is only relevant if some attenuation or gain has been applied in the 24bit domain.
Title: Soundcard digital pathways?
Post by: Patsoe on 2006-08-23 18:32:21
Here's an interesting piece of info: I just looked it up, and my DAC (an IS-5022 by Philips) actually supports 20bit inputs. Would sending this DAC a 24bit signal (which then gets truncated, I assume) result in worse quality than 16bit dithered? Of course, this question is only relevant if some attenuation or gain has been applied in the 24bit domain.


My guess is that the electronic noise in the DAC will sufficiently dither the signal, since for equipment of that time noise will probably be somewhere around the 18-19th bit. Should be good.
Title: Soundcard digital pathways?
Post by: puntloos on 2006-08-23 19:22:36

Here's an interesting piece of info: I just looked it up, and my DAC (an IS-5022 by Philips) actually supports 20bit inputs. Would sending this DAC a 24bit signal (which then gets truncated, I assume) result in worse quality than 16bit dithered? Of course, this question is only relevant if some attenuation or gain has been applied in the 24bit domain.


My guess is that the electronic noise in the DAC will sufficiently dither the signal, since for equipment of that time noise will probably be somewhere around the 18-19th bit. Should be good.

Yeah from the specs the DAC's SNR is around 103dB a-weighted.. that sounds to be around 18-19..
Title: Soundcard digital pathways?
Post by: 2Bdecided on 2006-08-24 13:42:45


Here's an interesting piece of info: I just looked it up, and my DAC (an IS-5022 by Philips) actually supports 20bit inputs. Would sending this DAC a 24bit signal (which then gets truncated, I assume) result in worse quality than 16bit dithered? Of course, this question is only relevant if some attenuation or gain has been applied in the 24bit domain.


My guess is that the electronic noise in the DAC will sufficiently dither the signal, since for equipment of that time noise will probably be somewhere around the 18-19th bit. Should be good.

Yeah from the specs the DAC's SNR is around 103dB a-weighted.. that sounds to be around 18-19..


If it's A-weighted, I'm not sure that's even 16-bits! (I could calculate - it probably is, but little more). Is that anymore than the M-audio card?

The analogue noise on the output can't dither a truncated digital signal on the input. It might hide the truncation distortion, but that's a different issue - and not guaranteed either.

Cheers,
David.
Title: Soundcard digital pathways?
Post by: odyssey on 2006-08-31 21:14:55

Creative X-Fi cards let you select the master clock frequency, including 44.1 kHz, and also have a bit-perfect mode in "audio creation" mode.

I just tried to enable bit-matched playback on my X-fi (on x64), however i think theres a fault in the driver because I get 48khz output on every material i try to playback. I tried contacting Creative about this, but have not yet got an informative answer.

Okay there wasn't a fault in the driver, it does just not work as I expected. You can only get bitmatched output on the X-fi though the WAV ADPCM driver (whatever that is - maybe someone can enlighten me). Appearently any WAV played back sends the signal with correct frequency to my reciever - What I don't get, is that I would assume that all output (mp3's etc.) that are decoded would be a PCM signal, hence I don't get why they are not routed the same way as plain WAV files.

Does anyone know if kernel streaming or anything else does this?
Title: Soundcard digital pathways?
Post by: coburn_c on 2006-10-06 02:29:21
On my X-fi, in "audio creation mode" it allows you to set the clock to 44.1Khz.  Now I'm not sure what effect this has, but it sure doesn't change the output.  The card can only output 48Khz and 96Khz, and it resamples every bit of it.  This does have the plus side that analog content is sent out over stereo pcm.. but has the downside of turning 44.1KHz DTS content into.. crap.
Title: Soundcard digital pathways?
Post by: odyssey on 2006-10-06 09:13:00
On my X-fi, in "audio creation mode" it allows you to set the clock to 44.1Khz.  Now I'm not sure what effect this has, but it sure doesn't change the output.  The card can only output 48Khz and 96Khz, and it resamples every bit of it.  This does have the plus side that analog content is sent out over stereo pcm.. but has the downside of turning 44.1KHz DTS content into.. crap.

It's still resampled. You need to check "Bit matched playback" which greys out the field you can specify samplerate.

I figured that foobar sends this correctly and should be bit identical.
Title: Soundcard digital pathways?
Post by: coburn_c on 2006-10-06 14:55:06

On my X-fi, in "audio creation mode" it allows you to set the clock to 44.1Khz.  Now I'm not sure what effect this has, but it sure doesn't change the output.  The card can only output 48Khz and 96Khz, and it resamples every bit of it.  This does have the plus side that analog content is sent out over stereo pcm.. but has the downside of turning 44.1KHz DTS content into.. crap.

It's still resampled. You need to check "Bit matched playback" which greys out the field you can specify samplerate.

I figured that foobar sends this correctly and should be bit identical.



Well, for one, enabling bit matched playback does NOT grey out the samplerate field, nor does it enable bit matched playback.  My DTS audio CDs still come out resampled to 48KHz and sounding like crap on a stick(terrible distortion).  Creative's website even states the it only supports recording of 44.1KHz, not output.

Not that I'm shocked or anything, Creative Sucks.

Edit:  OK.. with bit matched playback and the sample rate set to 44.1KHz it does indeed put out a 44.1KHz signal... after it converts it to 48KHz and back..

Edit#2:  Kernel streaming works.. *clap*
Title: Soundcard digital pathways?
Post by: CSMR on 2006-10-07 03:03:14
You will not get bit perfect playback unless there is a dedicated connection between the application and the sound card; for example ASIO or kernel streaming. Otherwise the sound has to be mixed which entails volume reduction.
Title: Soundcard digital pathways?
Post by: odyssey on 2006-10-07 12:50:43


On my X-fi, in "audio creation mode" it allows you to set the clock to 44.1Khz.  Now I'm not sure what effect this has, but it sure doesn't change the output.  The card can only output 48Khz and 96Khz, and it resamples every bit of it.  This does have the plus side that analog content is sent out over stereo pcm.. but has the downside of turning 44.1KHz DTS content into.. crap.

It's still resampled. You need to check "Bit matched playback" which greys out the field you can specify samplerate.

I figured that foobar sends this correctly and should be bit identical.



Well, for one, enabling bit matched playback does NOT grey out the samplerate field, nor does it enable bit matched playback.  My DTS audio CDs still come out resampled to 48KHz and sounding like crap on a stick(terrible distortion).  Creative's website even states the it only supports recording of 44.1KHz, not output.

Not that I'm shocked or anything, Creative Sucks.

Edit:  OK.. with bit matched playback and the sample rate set to 44.1KHz it does indeed put out a 44.1KHz signal... after it converts it to 48KHz and back..

Edit#2:  Kernel streaming works.. *clap*

Bitmatching playback will not disallow other streams - Like I said, i had problems activating it with Winamp, but foobar2000 works out of the box (no kernel streaming)

You will not get bit perfect playback unless there is a dedicated connection between the application and the sound card; for example ASIO or kernel streaming. Otherwise the sound has to be mixed which entails volume reduction.

Everything sent to ADPCM (well that's what Creative said, but I thought that was a CODEC) will be bitmatched.
Title: Soundcard digital pathways?
Post by: CSMR on 2006-10-07 15:51:09
What you have just said would imply that bitmatched playback is not bit perfect.
Title: Soundcard digital pathways?
Post by: odyssey on 2006-10-07 16:18:51
What you have just said would imply that bitmatched playback is not bit perfect.

No
Title: Soundcard digital pathways?
Post by: CSMR on 2006-10-07 17:44:00
Then what happens if you have a bit-perfect stream which uses the full range and another stream starts to play at the same time?
Title: Soundcard digital pathways?
Post by: coburn_c on 2006-10-07 18:32:55
Then what happens if you have a bit-perfect stream which uses the full range and another stream starts to play at the same time?


Well, for me, it kills all playback. 

P.S. whats with the freaky religious sig?
Title: Soundcard digital pathways?
Post by: CSMR on 2006-10-08 01:58:18
(Which is that is not compatible with what odyssey said.)
Title: Soundcard digital pathways?
Post by: odyssey on 2006-10-08 16:29:03
Then what happens if you have a bit-perfect stream which uses the full range and another stream starts to play at the same time?

Just checked - My X-fi/Windows seems to be stuck at 44Khz no matter what I play now in "Bit-matched Playback"-mode  Even with Kernel streaming plugin.

(Which is that is not compatible with what odyssey said.)

I put the sig up at easter and haven't got round to changing it.

I did not say that you can play multiple streams with different sample rates at the same time, I said (like I'm having some trouble with now) that Bitmatched Playback does not disallow other streams like DTS/DD etc to be sent to external reciever.
Title: Soundcard digital pathways?
Post by: coburn_c on 2006-10-09 00:26:19
Just checked - My X-fi/Windows seems to be stuck at 44Khz no matter what I play now in "Bit-matched Playback"-mode  Even with Kernel streaming plugin.


Yeah, mine screws up a lot when I actually, you know.. use it.  Usually a reboot fixes it.

I did not say that you can play multiple streams with different sample rates at the same time, I said (like I'm having some trouble with now) that Bitmatched Playback does not disallow other streams like DTS/DD etc to be sent to external reciever.


I'm pretty sure I can't output an ac3/DD/DTS stream and a pcm stream at the same time.  And what are these 'other' streams any way?  The whole point of bitmatching is to get a bit identicle output, why would it disallow DD/DTS?  I needed bit matched playback to play DTS CDs.. You're very confusing...
Title: Soundcard digital pathways?
Post by: odyssey on 2006-10-09 14:26:30
I'm pretty sure I can't output an ac3/DD/DTS stream and a pcm stream at the same time.  And what are these 'other' streams any way?  The whole point of bitmatching is to get a bit identicle output, why would it disallow DD/DTS?  I needed bit matched playback to play DTS CDs.. You're very confusing...

Umm maybe, but without Bitmatched playback, DD/DTS are still sent to the reciever - One could wonder, why it would not be bit-identical without that setting then. Actually by "other streams" I meant streams with different sample rate, but while the stream does not break apart when playing content with different samplerates in Bit-matched playback, it makes the feature quite untrusty.

I'm on deep water now  Need more testing... or maybe just better drivers.
Title: Soundcard digital pathways?
Post by: coburn_c on 2006-10-10 04:38:24
What about this (http://www.tigerdirect.com/applications/searchtools/item-details.asp?EdpNo=2204079&Sku=A452-1000&SRCCODE=PRICEGRABBER&CMP=OTC-PRICEGRABBER&ci_srccode=cii_5784816&cpncode=08-14114255-2) card?
Title: Soundcard digital pathways?
Post by: Marvin77 on 2006-10-10 18:46:35
Hmm, interesting.

I found this review
http://www.guru3d.com/article/sound/363/ (http://www.guru3d.com/article/sound/363/)

The review  compares the X-plosion to the X-Fi for Games, Movies (DVD) and Music. As far as I understood, the verdict is the following:

Games: X-Fi better because the reviewer could not get EAX to work on the X-plosion. The X-plosion was still not that bad though.

Movies: X-plosion better for DVDs since it allows encoding of Dolby Digital 5.1 and DTS on the fly (means transfer to your receiver/speakers with a single cable).

Music: the RMAA numbers of the X-Fi are clearly better. Subjective listening tests found X-Fi slightly better in half of the tests and the X-plosion slightly better in the other half. Note that the author claims that he can hear the difference between the cards and proves it by making ABX tests with Foobar2000.
Title: Soundcard digital pathways?
Post by: coburn_c on 2006-10-10 22:57:25
That review was kind of crappy.. but those cpu utilization numbers were scary.  10% to play a movie? Lost 6fps to dts encoding?  I thought it was done in hardware?  oh well..
Title: Soundcard digital pathways?
Post by: MartinO2 on 2007-05-02 11:52:50
I just wonder, what kind of resampling method is  used in SB cards. It is a system like DAC -> ADC, so the digital audio signal is analogized and then sampled wiht desired sampling frequency or it is system based on interpolation of input signal? I wasnt able to find this information anywhere and I really need it for my project..

Thank for any help or reference...
Title: Soundcard digital pathways?
Post by: eevan on 2007-05-02 13:05:04
I just wonder, what kind of resampling method is  used in SB cards. It is a system like DAC -> ADC, so the digital audio signal is analogized and then sampled wiht desired sampling frequency or it is system based on interpolation of input signal? I wasnt able to find this information anywhere and I really need it for my project..

Thank for any help or reference...

I think it's an interpolation method. Here's the part of kX driver's Techical Guide to Playback and Recording (http://kxproject.lugosoft.com/tech.php?language=en)
Quote
DSP Resampling

It is widely known that 10k1 and 10k2-based audio cards perform audio resampling even when the incoming audio signal is 16/48. This happens due to not-so-perfect implementation of the SRC algorithms in hardware. For Audigy and Audigy2 cards (and, probably, for 10k1-based cards with chip revision >= 7 as well) the 'modified' 16/48 audio stream can be restored by using 'b2b' or 'FXBusX' plugins in the kX DSP.

The nature of the SRC bug causes all the audio data to contain partially-wrong 16th bit, thus giving you '15.5-bit playback' (and not '16bit'). The known solutions (the DSP plugins mentioned above) restore the 16th bit of the audio data, but only for the original 16/48 content. That is, if the incoming signal is not 16/48, but is, say, performed at 44100, 22050 or any other frequency, the 'b2b' and 'FXBusX' plugins, obviously, won't "correct" it, but will change the signal a little bit. That's why this correction is not turned on by the kX Audio Driver by default.

What is the difference between using b2b and FXBusX?(advanced topic)
The main difference is that FXBusX not only restores the 16th bit, but also performs sound truncation to 24 bits (optionally obtaining the least 8 bits from FXBus2 sources, if available), while the 'b2b' plugin restores the 16th bit only. From the user point of view this causes the following problem: if the truncated audio data generated by the FXBusX plugin is passed thru the Routing and Epilog plugins, it is automatically restored to '15.5bit' state (due to mathematical conversion), while the 24-bit audio data is not. So, when using FXBusX for bit-to-bit 16/48 playback, it is preferred to avoid adding any volume controls and route the output directly to the epiloglt (lite version!). The 'B2B' doesn't truncate the audio data and can be easily inserted between, say, FXBus 0,1 and the Routing.

The output signal (for instance, of the SPDIF outputs) might get truncated / rounded by hardware. This option is card-dependent (certain cards perform that, while the others don't). That's why it is recommended to check bit-to-bit playback and the particular B2B/FXBusX chain before using it (for instance, by trying the 'Direct SPDIF Recording' method and a SPDIF loopback cable).
Hope this helps.
Title: Soundcard digital pathways?
Post by: IndieRockSteve on 2007-05-22 15:03:53
So is it possible to tell if a soundcard is borking with the digital output when playing back something like a CD or does the DTS playback test cover that scenario as well?