Axiom Home Page Forums General Discussion Technical Questions Ethernet vs. Digital Audio Out

The use of mnemonics has never been a big part of my studying process. I guess my "damn the torpedoes, full speed ahead" thought matrix has precluded this. But I do recollect the previously mentioned pizza line from early studies of the OSI model, now that the fellas brought it to light again.

EDIT: Criminy, gotta supress the subconscious I guess. I didn't mean to use the words "Mnemonic" and "Matrix" in one sentence. You know what I'm referring to.

Heehee.

Hey I just wanted to thank you all for your responses. This was just the type of discussion and answers I was hoping for. I had a feeling that there'd be little if any difference in sound but figured I'd throw it at the experts and see for sure.

I'm in the same boat. Here are my assumptions.

If you have a receiver with an ethernet port, then you can send the signal direct from the PC to the receiver. Easy enough. I would however need a router so that I can also connect my cable modem to the PC.

If your receiver does not have an ethernet port, you can use a sound card with a digital output. The quality of the sound to the receiver depends on the quality of the sound card. All sound cards are known to make a popping sound and I can't imagine that to be pleasing to hear nor good for the speakers. Basically, it's not a direct route because the data either passes or gets filtered through the sound card. I'm not sure if the data gets passed or filtered, but if it gets filtered, I assume there might be some loss in quality. I'm testing this option right now and the sound is almost as good as a cd/dvd player. I'm trying different sound cards to see if I can get it to sound as good as my dvd player.

I've been told another option would be to get an ethernet to optical cable adapter. I'm not sure if there's a loss in quality, but I can't imagine it would be much. I plan on testing this route too. It's hard to find such an adapter, but I was told the Apple Airport Express does the job. I guess I would also need a wireless router with this route.

Hi,
I've got a HTPC with a sound card & a V2700 that also has a Ethernet port. I currently have 3 connection options:
1) S/PDIF: This is my prefred option (no popping). The HTPC can pass via the S/PDIF connection to the Reciever all the current major audio specs including PCM, DTS, DD in perfect digital quality which are then decoded by the Receiver.
2) Analoge Audio - I "could" use the cheapo audio card to decode the audio streams and output each channel to the Receiver but I would only ever look at this option if my Receiver could no longer decode the digital audio stream from the S/PDIF connection.
3) Ethernet on the Receiver: The limitation is that the receiver has to provide the Interface as well as the decoding. While I "could" user this "feature" I'd would then be limited to what could be decoded (eg MP3/WPA) and would still need my current conneciton over S/PDIF to play DVD's and anything with DD/DTS tracks. For me why bother - I'll push it all over the S/PDIF IF.

4) In the future I'll probably replace my Video card with an HDMI one and route Audio over this as well......

Nathan

hello
you guys mention " a good soundcard".
I've been wondering, if you are using spdif optical connection, is the quality of the soundcard that important ??

granted, I am sure there are soundcards that cost several hundred dollars which would have better chips, but would there be any sound quality difference between say, an onboard soundcard with spdif (nvidia 3/4 chipset) compared to a soundblaster audigy flavor or the month ??

Great Q Randy....I've used a couple of cards (one old, one new, both at the cheaper end) and while I did not hear any difference between them I have no imperical evidence that there is one. I am "guessing" that while you could get dodgy cards most should use little reprossing for the transmition of the digital signal of S/PDIF so should be the same. The only way would be to compare each of the S/PDIF streams to check for differences....way beyond me!

This actually opens up a whole new can of worms.

Not all soundcards are equal, not all s/pdif is equal. The sound cards most definitely color the sound and it's not as simple as taking a wav file and just sending the same (amongst different sound cards) digital data over the S/PDIF. Analog output from a sound card is usually really bad since PC's in general have very bad shielding.

The next issue is the DAC. This is what converts the digital audio into analog (drivers are analog so there has to be a DAC somewhere in the pathway). Not all DAC's are equal. If you look at the different squeezebox offerings, their highest end box (Transporter $1999) claims to have a high quality DAC (AKM AK4396 Multi-bit delta-sigma digital to analog converter). Can you really hear a difference? I don't know. My guess is the differences are subtle and it will depend on the type of music you are listening to. If you pop over to www.head-fi.org you will find people that claim to hear differences with cotton shielded silver wire. . . and further differences after the wire has been broken in.

The next question is what quality audio files are you listening to? If you are going to be playing mp3's that are encoded with anything less than lame -V 0 (256 vbr) then S/PDIF is probably good enough. With audiophile grade speakers however, you really should be using FLAC,APE or WAV. The Yamaha only supports mp3 and WAV, however the squeezebox does support FLAC.

I'm pretty much in the same boat as you. I have most of my collection ripped to FLAC and APE. So do I go for the Yamaha RX-V2700 and play mp3's or WAV, the $249 Squeezebox or perhaps get the $1999 transporter.

Hello
thanks for the reply

Yea I agree the analog output varies widely. Besides the quality, the popping sound when you turn them on sometimes is a real pain.

about the DAC. I have my linux apps setup to pass the audio out the spdif. In some apps it is called ac3passthru and in some I just call out the hardware location of the spdif. I am using the Alsa sound subsystem. I just assumed that a DAC was not used in this case. I cant imagine why one would be utilized. By the same token I was thinking the dac on the squeezebox would only be utilized if you were using the analog output of the squeezebox. If you have some quick links to clarify this, I'd love to see them. this is something i havent researched, just assumed. Now I looked at a couple of reference docs and maybe even on spdif output the mixing is done in analog ? I am hoping I am mistaken. Seems sorta silly, but my knoweldge is limited. My nvidia motherboard has a realtec ALC850 chip in it for audio.link to ALC850. Most of this soars over my head.

Cant really comment on the cotton shielded silver wire, I just go middle of the road on that kind of stuff. Just ordered some HDMI cable from monoprice.com, and felt guilty they were so cheap.

I have a large mp3 collection that unfortunately is at 128kb. back in the day i just had small computer speakers, and couldnt hear a difference and stored all my stuf that way. Now I am using FLAC for all new stuff, and actually using lala.com to retrieve my old favorites to facilitate reripping in FLAC.

Using the spdif out is new to me, so thanks for discussing it with me.

Randy

ps. my daughters love the little smiley faces on here. the 4 year old calls em smiley stickers

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This actually opens up a whole new can of worms.


The next issue is the DAC. This is what converts the digital audio into analog (drivers are analog so there has to be a DAC somewhere in the pathway).

If you pop over to www.head-fi.org you will find people that claim to hear differences with cotton shielded silver wire. . . and further differences after the wire has been broken in.

The next question is what quality audio files are you listening to?

I'm pretty much in the same boat as you. I have most of my collection ripped to FLAC and APE. So do I go for the Yamaha RX-V2700 and play mp3's or WAV, the $249 Squeezebox or perhaps get the $1999 transporter.

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