kuokhong

I have an X-fi Xtrememusic SB0460 with the latest youp pax driver ( I believe this driver enabled the DDL and DTS support) . My Speaker is Logitech Z5500. I am using analog connection now, and plan to change it to digital connection for better Sound Quality.

I want the soundcard to do the decoding as I think its better than the logitech built in decoder. and then output the sound via I/O Digital Module with Optical cable to my z5500. This means the decoding process all done by the X-fi and passed out with Digital Connection for better sound quality. Can this be done?

dj_stick

only if the original source material is encoded in 5.1 (aka .ac3 files or DVDs)

you'll most likely get a better quality using the analogue connection anyway, as the built in converters in the logitech systems are, well, not the greatest

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kuokhong

yea well, mostly from dvd. and yes source has dts and dolby.
i know the speaker's built in decoder not so good, thats why i want to decode using the sound card and pass it to the speaker using optical. this way better than analog, no?

dj_stick

no
the "decoder" will be better in the soundcard too, but what I'm talking about is the digital to analogue converters - theo nes on your soundcard are almost certainly better than the ones built into the speakers

and besides, if you decode the ac3 stream on the soundcard before it gets to the speaker via digital, you're only going to get stereo sound

so analogue is the way to go if you have a decent soundcard

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GigaWatt

the signal is only transfered digitaly, all the decoding is done by the decoder in the speakers, and as dj_stick put it, unless you have a optical amplifier or some kind of a receiver with an optical input, there is not much point in transfering the signal opticaly.

most PC speaker systems, even if they do happen to have an optical input have a poor implementation of D/A caonverters, so if you really want to get the max quality of sound, either buy a more expencive amplifier with an optical input (Hardman/Kardon has a series of those kind of amplifiers with a Kenwood decoder chip, i think i read something like that on the net, they don't come cheap, but they are one of the cheapest in the Hi-End audio industry... ), or just use the analogue uotput of the card and use the logitec speakers...

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kuokhong

thanks for the help. i think i ll just stick with the analog,