Quality of kx effects and Audigy DSP vs. receiver?

mirko2

I'd like to know how the digital section of an Audigy 2 ZX, together with kx DSP effects, compares to an average receiver (Denon 1906 in my case). Should the EQ and other plug-ins of kx be used or is the EQ/DSP of a modern receiver better and should the kx driver be used as spdif-out only? Is the DAC of the Audigy any good or do today's receivers have better DACs? Denon specs say DAC is 24 bit/96kHz and DSP is a "3rd generation SHARC HammerHead" 32bit floating point DSP, whatever that is, operating at 24bit/192KHz.

JGSF

Well, there's a lot more than bit-depth and samplerate... I personally think the Audigy's DAC's are pretty capable... while at home I connect my Audigy and my 1212m to my home stereo and I can't say I notice any difference between them under those conditions (only that the audigy has a bit more line and static noise).

ps: as for the 3rd generation SHARC Hammer 32bit floating point DSP... well, the old live's is also a 32bit dsp DSP... marketing crap? 3

mirko2

I remember from earlier visits that the equations used in kx plug-ins (for EQ etc) are not the mathematically correct equations but approximations that may cause considerable error (because the DSP is not sophisticated enough?). Is there a difference between DSPs in that regard or are the DSPs in the typical Yamaha/Denon/Sony receiver of the same kind?

mirko2

PS: These are the specs of the receiver's DSP:
http://www.analog.com/en/prod/0,,ADSP-21266,00.html
Are they up to the specs of the Audigy's DSP?

Max M.

>well, the old live's is also a 32bit dsp DSP... marketing crap?

no, it's true. it is 32-bit fixed-point DSP.

>the equations used in kx plug-ins (for EQ etc) are not the mathematically correct equations but approximations that may cause considerable error

hmm, where did you read that? i've never seen anything like this
(in other words, that's untrue).

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as for the question - well, it's hard to decide something without exact information about DACs used in the reciever ("high-quality DACs made by AD" is not enough - AD makes a lot of DACs - and...) But problem comes from another side - Even if Audigy's DACs are better (A2ZS DACs are pretty good - not a top end but higher then the middle) - there're many chances that you cannot avoid using receiver's DACs even if you connect to analog inputs. Simply because receiver first needs to digitaze any incoming analog signal to be able to apply any (digital!) processing - so actually with connecting sound card by analog you get a "DAC->ADC->DSP->DAC" way of things. Some receivers have so called "direct" mode (when incoming signal bypasses any digital stuff and goes directly to amplifier) - but it's a rare feature today (check your receiver manual). So...

JGSF

Huh...

What's the diference, in terms of operation, of fixed-point and floating point? Don't both represent 2^32 different values anyway?

Max M.

Ask google.

JGSF

I did... Well, I still get the feeling that it's the same thing for audio processing... the important thing is to have 2^16 or 2^20 or whatever different values to play with, floating, hangin loose or fixed...

jiiteepee

For your original question, ... even Audigy 2/4 cards do have good DAC it won't make the card good because of bad design. Because of internal resampling and missing (true) 24-bit support (24-bit/96 kHz data bypasses the resampling) you can't get HQ audio output from the card using either digital or analog path. If you do have some Audigy model w/ bit-accurate output (A2 Zs Notebook as for an example) then the situation is different.

You could measure the Denon receiver w/ RMAA software and if the results are better than Audigys then use native samplerate through S/PDIF (coax/opt) connection from Audigy to Denon ...

Some facts on Audigy 2 - http://www.digi-life.com

jiitee