gtardirt

I know the analog rear speaker outputs are supposed to be better than the front in terms of snr and thd. Are they better than =all= the other analog outputs, regardless of the sound card model?

Russ

On some card models there is no difference.

gtardirt

Is there a difference for Audigy 2 zs cards? How about for SB Live 5.1 cards?

Russ

I do not *think* that there is with the A2 ZS (not including the headphone jack on the Audigy Drive)...

As for the SB Live! 5.1, it depends on the specific model (some models use 2 different codecs to get 6 channels (thus the quality difference), while others (more recent versions) use a single 6 channel codec).

Maddogg6

I beleive this to be true as well - it seems they are all I2S based outputs, going by 'listening' I hear no difference like I do with my SBLive. Going by the Help files Appendix A: IO Assignments - Last column ('10K2 nme') shows respective outputs as 'I2S' based.
Front = I2S 0
Rear = I2S 3
Center/LFE = I2S 1

Headphones show SPDIF, but I thought I seen somewhere it was an (SPDIF to) I2S thing happening... I could be wrong, but it sounds as good if not better than the cards front/rear/center/lfe analog outs.

the 10K1 column - shows them as AC97 based.. except the rear out, that being SPDIF based - likely connected to a better codec.

gtardirt

How about for Live5.1 model SB0060?

Also, for the A2 ZS, are you saying the output quality of the drive's headphone jack is not as good as the other outputs? Because of the potentiometer noise perhaps?

Russ

Either way, the I/O drive has it's own DAC's, etc, thus a potential difference in quality.

I am not positive, but I think there is a difference with that one. (I think the only 5.1 models that use a single 6 channel codec are (some of) the SB022x models (i.e. my SB0228))

No, I am just saying that there is a possible difference in quality due to the fact that it uses different DAC's (and it's not AC97 based). In some cases, I *think* it may actually offer better quality (not sure about the A2 ZS + Audigy drive). I am not an expert on the subject, but I seem to recall reading such info somewhere here in the forum (Max M. or TravelRec (and others), could probably give you better info).

TravelRec.

The thing is: as long as you hear no difference with your ears - you don´t shoud go further with thinking about that. Latest SBLive! and all Audigy series have a decent quality on all outputs. Sure - if you want to use external FX and you run the signal back to the soundcard´s input, you should use the rear out for that.

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