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tgthree

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  1. Well, you know what they say about needing to learn the hard way sometimes. Oh, I know they'll let you listen to any darned thing they carry any way you can imagine it, but that wasn't my point. I've never been to any shop that has bunches of custom HTPCs lying around for you to try out any of the zillion different ways you could configure a system like this (internal sound card vs. external sound card vs. using a standalone DAC vs. not using a standalone DAC vs. HDMI vs. digital out vs. analog...you get my point). At least some of this decision process is going to have to be made just from reading and a good bit of guessing. Hence my call for help. There's a trade-off here. I don't want complexity just for complexity's sake, but I do believe that some additional complexity and willingness to tolerate frustration can give you extra customization, future-proofing and value. That's the balance I'm trying to strike here. Will take a gander. Thanks for the recommendations and patience. Aloha Mitch...it sounds like of all the people that have responded to this thread, you are the closest to what I'm imagining here. So the big question is, how does the audio signal in your setup get from computer to speakers? Could be either. Seems most decent sound cards can handle both. So what would give the best sound from the analog, what would give the best from digital...if we assume for a moment that I wouldn't want to do any re-processing after the sound leaves the PC's sound card? And which of those two would you recommend overall? Wouldn't that send the same signal to both the left and right channels though?
  2. I understand your point here, and I thank you for your patience with me as I try to explain what I'm looking for. In addition to the possible extra cost of paying for unnecessary DSP capability, I also worry about "double processing." If I get my PC processing the sound the way I want it processed, I don't then want it running through another device's processor where it might get re-processed or otherwise messed with. That's not to say that a MH or other device doesn't do good work with DSP, just that having a PC DSP solution and an external DSP might get to be too many cooks in the kitchen, if you take my meaning. Ah, I do see now that I'm looking in more detail that the four minijack outputs are analog coming out of the sound card. So how then would those analog outputs (already run through Burr-Brown DACs on the particular sound card that I'm looking at) best be connected to amplifiers? Would a cable with a minijack on one end and an RCA jack on the other suffice? How then do the four signals coming out of the sound card get split left and right for the amp? I want to take any sound format that you can possibly imagine that comes out of a PC (crappy stereo sound from YouTube, multichannel sound from high-end music downloads, gaming sound, online whoopie cushions, Blu-Ray movie audio, you name it) and funnel it into an amplifier for playback through a 7.1 surround sound system. And I want to get the most sound quality for my money, given my willingness to fiddle around with settings and codecs, etc. Now I'm realizing that the "multichannel" sound cards do have DACs built in, so perhaps it's just a connectivity question (see above). I'm not asking anyone to "prove" anything to me. I'm curious what the actual differences are so that I can make educated decisions about what to buy. I'm an engineer by trade (not an electrical or acoustic one, though, unfortunately), so while I love going out and listening to all different kinds of equipment to see what sounds best to me, I also like to know what exactly I'm paying for. Furthermore, a lot of the setups I'm thinking about are unusual or "experimental," so it's not like I can go to Best Buy or even your more dedicated HT stores and find demo setups of $2500 custom-built HTPCs running through $2500 8-channel DACs. Thank you for your response, Mr. Diament, but I do have to say I'm a Windows guy through and through. As a guy that likes to dabble in swapping out software and hardware (and even building/writing some of his own sometimes), Mac just isn't an option. I have to say that while I didn't understand a lot of this rant, I am surprised how many people on a "computer audiophile" forum are saying that a computer-based solution won't work. I don't mean that as a criticism, and I recognize that what I'm trying to do isn't especially conventional. But that's why I came to this forum for help. The difficulties are still in figuring out the best way to get sound (whatever that may be) from my computer to a 7.1 audio system. Not the easiest way, but the best sounding way. I'm about to build a PC that will be the only PC in my household, and I want it to handle everything that I do on a day-to-day basis through one display and speaker system. That means web browsing, movies, music, a little gaming, and anything else I or you can think to do on a computer I'm still very open to a standard PC HDMI output to A/V receiver setup, but I can get that recommendation from the guy at Best Buy where most of the customers don't care about much of anything except that they can open the box and be watching movies perfectly 15 minutes later. I came to the forum to see what innovative or unusual designs might be out there for people willing to trade ease of use for sound quality. My initial theory was that this trade-off would come by eliminating the cost of giant stacks of dedicated audio equipment for an in-PC solution where simple software upgrades can help maximize future-proofing and customization. Maybe I'm wrong, and I admit that. But I'm interested in reading the discussion among posters that have tried different solutions using a PC as a home theater's nerve center. Unfortunately, not much. This is my vision of the future. I think that the future of the home theater lies in the computer, especially as more and more of our A/V content comes off the Web, and not necessarily only through "cookie cutter" services like Netflix that are easily handled by media center software. The HTPC I'm planning to build will be the only computer in my household. If I want to shop on Amazon, listen to my iTunes collection, or watch a Blu-Ray movie, it's all going to be done on the same PC and display. I do think that this is the future. Perhaps the technology isn't mature yet, but I've always been an early adopter willing to put up with a few headaches to have the latest and greatest.
  3. Understood; the only hope I had was avoiding paying for DSP in a device that I don't need to do DSP. That's the main reason I've been seeking a DSP-less standalone DAC. Not sure why I would need a device like the AF1/why I can't just run the signal from the card directly into the DACs if I go the quad-DAC route. I was under the impression that the sound card output from the set of four minijacks (one each for front, side, rear, and center/LFE) was digital, but I admit I could be wrong about that. If that's the case, then why can you not connect a sound card directly to an amplifier using splitters and adapters?
  4. I get that there's no way around converting a digital signal from a PC to an analog one for a speaker. But if I understand correctly, there's a massive difference between an audio processor and a DAC. An audio processor handles all DSP functions, which are part of the process of getting a digital signal that is properly divided between the different speaker channels, etc. A DAC then converts the audio processor's output into an analog signal to be amplified for the speakers. Obviously a CPU can't be a DAC, because a CPU is fundamentally digital. And it's easy to conflate these functions because typically your audio processor and your DAC are contained within the same box. But this works as a DAC...no microchips, no processors necessary. So what I'm still wondering is if there's a way to separate those two functions, allowing the audio processing to take place within the computer and the digital-to-analog conversion (DAC) to take place in a standalone device. I see your sound card suggestions, and I'll have to take some more time to look at those, although I'm really finding myself wondering what it is that differentiates those cards from their less expensive brethren. A $3000 sound card and a $30 sound card are both using the same processor to run their algorithms; are you paying for better algorithms (a.k.a. better software) or higher-quality interconnects on the card or better shielding from the internal radiation you mention? With regard to the radiation, there's no need for the card to necessarily be internal; I'd be fine with an external solution, but I still am interested in finding out more about ways to let my CPU do double-duty as an audio processor (NOT a DAC). OK, this starts to answer my question, although a preliminary examination of the LIO-8 suggests it also does onboard DSP and is thus not quite what I'm looking for. There are plenty of two-channel DACs out there that are just DACs, and so far the only solution I've been able to think of is to run the outputs from the sound card into four 2-channel DACs, which as you mentioned might have to somehow be synchronously timed. Even that hasn't resulted in a perfect solution because I've yet to see a 2-channel DAC that accepts a 1/8" minijack input like the kind that comes out of most sound cards; would you just put an adapter on the end that converts it to an RCA plug and put it into the DAC's S/PDIF input?
  5. I appreciate the recommendations, and that sounds like the direction I may have to go. But the hypothetical question I'm still asking is whether audio processors are even necessary. Each of those devices (Emotiva and Oppo) has onboard processors that handle all decoding and post-processing functions, and (in theory at least) my HTPC CPU should be able to do all that just as efficiently if not more so. So I'm looking for a device or connection that will take me from here (coming out of my PC's sound card) to here (going into what will be a 5-channel amp for my center and surrounds and a 2-channel amp for my L/R channels). And also, if someone has experience with a setup like that, what the pros and cons are with respect to sound quality alone, not ease of use or setup. I know this isn't the easiest or most common way, but I have my reasons for thinking this might be the best way for my particular needs, and I'm just curious how I might realize it and what the pitfalls might be.
  6. So, it sounds like the issue is that the DACs that come without a second mortgage are 2-channel DACs, when what I would need for an integrated solution is a DAC that can handle all 7.1 of my channels with analog outputs for each, and that just doesn't exist at an affordable price point? I truly do about a 50/50 split of music and movies, so I want good sound from each. I don't mind extra wires or equipment, but I'm not sure I could afford to spend double in order to buy "duplicate" equipment to handle each type of audio. I understand that I'm making it more complicated, but I'm doing so for a reason. Part of it is cost. As I've mentioned before, my HTPC is going to have a blazing fast 3.4 GHz quad-core processor onboard. Your average DAC chip in an A/V receiver is something like 300 MHz, as far as I know. So, since I'm already laying out the dough for the processor in my computer, it seems like I ought to be able to funnel my A/V receiver budget into a device that specializes in amplification only. Plus, besides the extra processing power I have in my PC vs. a dedicated DAC, there's also the customization aspect. I wouldn't be wed to the decoding that's built into my A/V receiver. I can download new codecs and software whenever I want in order to be up to date on the latest surround sound standards, or to even select processing algorithms that produce the best sound for my particular taste. So the whole point of this thread is that I'm not trying to do things the simplest way, and I'm sure there's someone on these forums that knows about and has attempted the sort of thing I'm envisioning. So, is the Emotiva the beginning and end of the market for something that takes a USB input directly from a computer, processes it, and amplifies it seven ways? And when you say I could feed a multichannel power amp with analog outputs of an HTPC, what equipment would I need to put in the PC in order to get said analog outputs? I do know my way around PCs pretty well, and I'm willing to tolerate the tweaks needed to keep it working correctly; you might even say I enjoy constantly messing with settings and trying new codecs/software. Abandoning the HTPC idea for a NAS solution isn't an ideal choice for me either, since I'm building the PC anyway to be my new home computer. The idea is just to go ahead and include the HT functionality since it really shouldn't require that much extra investment. With the high-end chipset, memory and storage that I'll be using anyway, handling hi-fi video and audio output should be a piece of cake...it's just a matter of finding the equipment that will get the information from the PC to my display and my speakers. Right now, I have a Harman Kardon AVR 240 A/V receiver connected to five Mirage Nanosats and a Polk PSW10 subwoofer. It works fine for the small space I have and the limited budget I was working from when I put the system together about 4-5 years ago. But now I have a larger space and a larger budget, so I want to move up in the world. I'm about to add a pair of nice floorstanding speakers to handle my L/R channels, either B&W CM9s or GoldenEar TritonCinema Three's, and as I've said, I'm about to build a very powerful PC that should have no problem handling 1080p video and multichannel audio encoding in its sleep. And in my ideal (perhaps impossible) world, I'd replace the AVR 240 with a dedicated 7-channel amplifier, and the point of the thread is to figure out the best way to connect a PC to said amplifier.
  7. But what I'm looking for here is an overview of other options. I like good sound, so the "most straightforward path" isn't necessarily the one I want to take. I can't afford to drop $10,000 on an AVP/amp combo, but there are reviews on here of outboard DACs for $600, which isn't prohibitive. So when you say "separates," you're covering a really wide range of possibilities, and those are the ones I'm trying to understand. The most basic way is to just run integrated motherboard sound to an AVR, and the most expensive way is to drop the price of a Volkswagen on a dedicated audio processor and 200-pound amplifier. I'm wondering what options lie in between, in particular options that are going to provide the best sound/dollar value proposition. Thanks again for responding. I understand all this, but the question I'm really asking here is why can't the blazing fast quad-core CPU in my HTPC handle all these audio processing duties (DSP, bass management, etc.)? That's what I'm ultimately hoping to do here, and while it may be a pipe dream given currently available technology, it seems that there are at least some posters on here who have run setups like that, or tried to. So the trick seems to be threefold: (a) to find the sound card equipment that best allows the PC to execute these responsibilities; (b) to convert the digital output from the PC into analog; and © to get that analog signal amplified and out to my speakers. Does that sound approximately correct? And if so, what equipment can/should I use to do that?
  8. First of all, thanks so much for the response. Just a couple follow-up questions... Does multichannel audio not also have to pass through a DAC? Ultimately the speakers have to receive an analog signal, so even multichannel HDMI audio would have to be converted, would it not? It just doesn't have to be spliced into extra channels. Or am I wrong about how this process works? I guess what I'm asking is this: if I do have lots of two-channel music (which I do), is it optimal to still feed the multichannel audio (when available) straight to the receiver via HDMI? Or can/should I just use an external DAC to handle everything? So, correct me if I'm wrong, but if I get a standalone DAC, there's no need for an AVR, right? I could feed the signal from the external DAC straight into an amplifier. Correct? Don't worry, I'm doing my homework on the speakers and the room as well. I can go to a store and listen to speakers and acoustic treatments, etc. And I've had audio systems before, just never ones that have run off of a PC the way I hope my next one will. So that's where I need the extra help, especially since this isn't something most home theater users do.
  9. Hello everyone. As you can tell from my post count, I'm new here. I've been reading up extensively over the last couple of weeks as I get ready to try my hand at building an HTPC. I stumbled across these forums, and the only thing I haven't been able to locate in my hour or so of perusing is an article or thread on the basics of hi-fi computer audio. I'm what you might call a "budding audiophile." I'm still learning the ins and outs as my budget grows, but I do know that I appreciate high-quality sound. I'm getting ready to put together the "next generation" of my theater, and my idea is to use my new HTPC as the complete nerve center, with no other external input sources. Handling the video piece is easy, since my 1080p HDTV takes a signal directly from an internal video card and throws it up on the screen. Audio, it seems, is far trickier. In the abstract, my thought was just to replicate what happens with video: connect a sound card to some sort of amplifier which would then power my 7.1 surround sound system. But beyond the fact that I have yet to locate a 7-channel amplifier that can take an input directly from a sound card, it appears from poking around these forums that internal sound cards themselves are fraught with issues. So what's an audiophile to do? I know this question is essentially the purpose of these entire forums, but I'm looking for a primer as a newbie. There's the option of keeping my old A/V receiver instead of getting a dedicated amp, there are internal sound cards, there are external DACs (USB and S/PDIF, apparently), and some of these choices don't even begin to discuss how the speakers actually get powered.... Would it be too much trouble to ask someone to just give me a "state of the industry" rundown of the different choices? A "Computer Audiophile for Dummies"? Any help would be much appreciated, and might even be a great help to other new users in the future.
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