On Wed, Aug 11, 2010 at 2:08 PM, Bob van der Poel <bob@xxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote: > I finally got my s/pdif output on my motherboard working and find the > audio audibly cleaner than previous attempts with various analogue > solutions. My desktop speakers have a digital input, so any noise, > etc. would be the fault of that, not the computer. ?? > > What I'm wondering: Is digital out via the MB about as good as it > gets? I'm thinking that I could get an expensive <insert name of card> > pci card ... but why? Any signal (digital or analogue), no matter how > clean, it puts out can't be better can it than the digital straight > out of the MB? digital is digital, so the actual data being delivered by S/PDIF or ADAT or MADI or any other digital protocol/format will be identical. but the key to the sound is the digital->analog conversion step and then any degradation/noise/distortion that occurs in the analog domain after that. so, s/pdif gives you a pure path out of the machine, as pure as anything else, but you could use better converters and/or a better analog signal path and still see a difference. that is partly what some (not all) of the out-of-the-box solutions offer. --p _______________________________________________ Linux-audio-user mailing list Linux-audio-user@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx http://lists.linuxaudio.org/listinfo/linux-audio-user