Lossless Playback via Receiver from PC
Reply #3 – 2013-01-21 16:44:23
Don't fret too much about purity of sound these days. Windows 7's default sound handling & resamplers are high enough quality to be transparent and aside from some very low power devices for battery use, most sound chips provide clean linear audio on analogue stereo line output (they may differ in ability to drive low impedance loads like some headphones) Unless you bypass it, using exlusive mode/ASIO etc, Windows 7's Mixer will convert all sources to 48000 Hz at high bit depth and mix them together. Unlike the default settings in some earlier version of Windows that used kmixer, this uses high quality resampling by default and I believe this does a great job and is audibly transparent. Support for sound on HDMI seems to vary: My brother has recently acquired a MiniDP to HDMI adaptor for a MacBook, and hasn't so far discovered audio support. I've got a DisplayPort to HDMI adapter on my HP laptop and it supports HDMI audio as a separate device. I'm not sure whether the mode supported is a function of the TV or just the laptop's ATI Display Adapter, but in my case supports 44.1 and 48kHz, 16 bit, 2 channels & Dolby Digital, which again is enough for transparent stereo audio (I don't know about the surround conversion in Dolby Digital). (Conversely, my IDT soundcard supports a wider range of sampling rates and bit depths, as does a BOSE L1 Tonematch over USB that I sometimes plug into) I suspect that if it has a stereo 3.5mm jack, it has as on-board sound chip (integrated into the motherboard), which is likely in this day and age to be very good for the output of stereo audio and at least pretty good for audio input. Your biggest issue might be if you have sources with more than 2 channels (e.g. 5.1) to ensure they reach the receiver OK. Dolby Digital includes discrete channel AC3, which could come direct from a DVD, for example. It might be possible to hook up certain software (e.g. Windows Media Player) in exclusive mode, to give them sole control of the sound card. I believe DirectSound and ASIO can both achieve this. Don't hesitate to repeat questions that have been missed. You had a lot of questions, probably too many to get them answered at once.