*Official* Asus Xonar HDAV1.3 thread - Page 6

It's not really about the AVR.

There are more to speakers than just wattage and the problem is those speakers aren't going to be revealing enough to show the difference between a losslessl track and a lossy track. I wouldn't feel too bad though... many of the folks on these forums (avs in general) are in the same boat, whether they want to admit it or not.

I wouldn't worry much about lossless unless you plan on upgrading your speakers pretty soon to ones that don't come in a complete set -- you're going to probably need to spend more on just two speakers than you did on that whole Z5500 set.

I myself have the card installed in my machine and Both audio(lossy) & video working fine,still waiting for the big TMT update, I will report back as soon as I get it.[/quote]

hi everybody, i'm new in this 3d. i would like to know if this card (deluxe version) would be a good pre-amp, a sort of ring between my htpc and my rotel rmb 1077. would it sound as a good pre-amp? is it technically possible?
thank you everybody (sorry for my bad english)

Yes, and without the daughter board there is no analog out ports on the sound card. You would have to use HDMI to an HDMI receiver the Z5500 only had Analog 1/8 mini, Coax, or Toslink for inputs no HDMI.

The Z5500 is capable of 24/96 doesn't that make a difference?

No...

Buying this card with that speaker setup is like putting 5,000$ rims on a beat-up hooptie...

BTW

I have B&W 602 Series 2 fronts and B&W LCR60 center w/ the 12" B&W basic sub (can't remember the model num).

This is all driven with an Onkyo 705 AVR

I cannot tell the difference between 24/96 and 16/44.1
I can tell the difference between DD and 16/48 easily though. (gf8200 5.1 LPCM)

Without meaning to offend anyone, but I see a lot of messages here from people with "computer audio setups" (so to speak.) Like someone earlier mentioned, it's a waste of (their) money to buy this card.
It's not about the bitrate, sample rate, watts etc.
To benefit lossless audio the whole chain needs to be a high quality one.
That means an AVR with HDMI in/out capable of basically anything (Dolby HD, DTS HD, HD Master and all the lesser codecs.
That's only the AVR, (1000 U$ and up).
An even more important link in the HD sound chain is the speakers (7 of them plus a subwoofer).
And we're talking at least mid range stuff here, especially for the front en center speakers. A whole set of mediocre (=not high end) quality might set you back another 1000 U$.
Cables? (quality speaker cables and HDMI cables, no wireless sh*t): Another 200 U$.
Need I say more?

My whole point is (again) not to offend anyone but to discourage people spending 200 U$ or more on a card that performs only as well as one's PA system and then complaining that there's no audible difference.
I play my movies (gamers don't neccesarily need this card) on a large 52'' plasma screen with an Onkyo TX-SR875 AVR (mediocre at best), 2x B&O S75 left and right (mediocre again), 1x Tannoy dedicated center speaker (again mediocre), 2x KEF surround (mediocre again) and 2x low end back speakers (worse).
And even I am not sure I will hear the difference between lossy and lossless but I'm willing to give it a try.

My advice is to read this thread about HD audio (and video)issues:
http://forum.slysoft.com/showthread.php?t=16079
http://www.tomsguide.com/us/high-def...view-1088.html

as well as threads here on this forum.

What if you are planning on upgrading your AMP and speakers a year or two down the road. Would you not hear some advantages with this card and your Z5500 outputting 24/96 NOW and then get better speakers for down the road LATER for more improvements?

*edit* I posted before reading arttext's response.

arttext,

I can't agree more. I am using 9.8 until Theta CBIII released their HDMI option and with 3 krell amps powering all Martin Logan speakers, the sounds was huge jump for me from SPDIF to HDMI 8 channels LPCM. But I expected the bit-stream using this card will be similar like what I have. To me I am not able to resist not to try this card

I think people are just wanting to know (like myself) if they are able to decode the next gen audio formats of Blu-ray and HD DVD. As you say though, the end result may not be much of a difference from lossy as a result of the quality of speakers or amp limitations etc. but that just gives PC enthusiasts more reasons to upgrade further! Besides that, it is easier on the cash flow to upgrade in stages.

JAC

I got around that by doing this:
http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/showt...8#post13897618
But that may be particular to the 8200 board.

Or 4850 today 8 channels LPCM with this.

why? save the money and get a decent setup first then spend the money on a card like this...

regular 5.1 on a good system will destroy any lossless new 7.1 format on a crappy system.

Then it just seems silly to invest money into an audio card solution for the pc when I can just take that same cash and invest it into an AVR/Speaker system that will peform the higher quality audio with a stand alone player no? The only advantage I see it that the PC would allow a storage system for HD audio/video so I don't have to get off my fat arse. What is the minimum standard for the right AV system for the PC solution and the Xonar? From what I am reading from you all is that it's just not reasonable to expect the higher quality audio from Z5500 if that is so what is? I hope I don't sound insulting, just trying to understand what is needed to obtain the difference in audio quality on a PC platform.

Anyone compare the sound of a set top box BR player that can bitstream to Multichannel LPCM through the same HD capable receiver.? I'm looking to rent but they'll only start renting mid sept.

- Do you already have a stand alone player? (PS3 perhaps)

- Basically it is what you can afford. Any HDMI 1.1 or HDMI 1.3 compliant AVR and what you can afford for speakers. Some over at highdefdigest recommend the new Onkyo TX-SR 606

http://www.ncix.com/products/index.p...5&promoid=1066


What they are suggesting is you are far better off to spend the money on upgrading the AVR and speakers instead of putting more money into your HTPC to try and drive the Z5500 further and be disappointed with the results. They are basically maxed out with DD/DTS regardless of the 24/96 support.

They also say that the whole chain needs to be "high def" compatible from the head all the way down to the speakers. The message i get is you will get better results with an AVR and speaker upgrade and continue with the head as is (your HTPC and lossy sound) over simply replacing the sound card and continuing with the Z5500.

Maybe I am dense minded but this get's me back to what is the difference between using the Xonar daughter card analog out to the Z5500 6 channnel direct if the Xonar is passing the uncompressed audio to it and using an AVR setup? Yes, I understand that there is better audio and video equipment that would blow away my system by far, but I still can't understand how anyone knows how much of a quality difference there would be considering no one really has this card set up properly (no software for it yet) let alone it's not out in mass. No difference than a AVR/PS3 (which I have) taking the signal and processing it to the speakers yes/no?

I 'll give it a shot and let you know.

Great.

Thanks,

Rich

The Z-5500 is a GAMER's sound system. Boomy little sub, high crossover and little satellites (Bose anyone?). It works great for gaming (explosions), MP3. Doesn't have the SPL to fill a living room.

Oh yeah, look at the TDH-10%! Almost 100X too high.

In Taiwan The prices are as follows. But I have no idea how they are going to market these in the US and Europe.There are three packages.

$201 = both cards +TMT(Deluxe)
$169 = HDMI card +TMT
ASUS BC-1205PT + XONAR HDAV 1.3 Deluxe = $312
http://www.asus.com/products.aspx?l1...20&modelmenu=1

Around what expected in US too. Thanks for the info myAV.

Do they sell the card without TMT? I already have it

- Rich

All that yet it sounds pretty damn good when I play Blu-rays. It fills the room just fine thanks!

Really glad I haven't purchased TMT yet. That is a nice bonus for buying this card.

myAV, if you get a chance can you please measue the card and let us know how long it is? I am pretty tight on space inside my case and I am hoping that it is not longer than 8 inches.

Thanks

@bbfn11

Audio is a chain and it is only ever as good as it's weakest link

For digital audio the chain is as follows

Speakers (Quite a variety of things go in to their quality, let your ears be the judge)
cables (guage and distance matters, everything else is marketing)
Amplifiers (A spec sheet for an amp tells alot about it, but not everything)
Interconnects (these are a bit more important than speaker wire, but this wiring is often internal w/ an AVR)
DAC (Probably one of the more overlooked components by the general population)
Digital Interconnect (Digital cables work or they don't, don't spen a dime more than you have too, construction quality does count for something though)
Digitial Source (16 bits gives about 100db of dynamic range and 48khz sampling rate means that it can reproduce 1-24khz, so 16b/48khz is pretty much good enough)

So if you drove you Z5500 in analog mode from a Xonar you'd get >16b/48khz audio (not that big a deal really), Great DACs and then you'd pass that audio to your Z5500 amplifier and speakers, leaving the weakest point you speakers and amp.

You could power the Z5500 with a real AVR (Although the xonar has DAC's in the same range as 1500+ AVRs) and then upgrade to real speakers later.

My setup to replicate with new parts for just stereo (2 fronts, sub and AVR) would probably be $2000-$2500 and I've compared 24b/98khz to 16b/48khz of the same material back to back and basically could not tell the difference, so the kind of gear you must need for that is way outta my price range and probably yours.

I probably wouldn't even worry about anything until you had some coin to drop on an AVR, then you can replace your Z5500 speakers peice by peice, then you can go back and start upgrading all over again (which is what I did).

Well since this thread got pretty hijacked with talk about speaker systems I guess it would be a good time to chime in with some questions that I've been looking to get answered. I have been researching all my prospective HTPC components and originally budgeted $200-250 for the Z5500 system, however, I suspected it would not be quality enough to take advantage of the true HD audio. This thread has atleast confirmed that much for me Thank you for that.

As my research continues I have recently been looking into the Onkyo HT-S9100THX as it seems like a very high quality system for its cost. My question is do you feel this system will really be able to take advantage of all the new HD lossless audio the Asus and Auzentech cards will provide. (I know that in order to take full advantage of the lossless audio would probably cost thousands for a system, but I'm just looking for a nice step up without breaking the bank).

Hey,

Any idea if this card + TMT will decode Dolby® Digital Plus, Dolby® Digital TrueHD or DTS-HD and send it as multichannel LPCM to receiver via HDMI?
I'm inteerested in this because my DENON-1908 doesn't have codecs for these new audio formats but it supports multichannel LPCM upto 24/192 or sth.

Or any idea if I can play multichannel 24\\96 audio files (for example lossless flac-rips from DVD-audio discs) with this card + TMT and get them sent to my receiver as multichannel 24/96 LPCM?

hi, can someone confirm that it will not down-rez the audio when using the analogue outs (via the daughter board).

thanks

CaM

You better look in this thread:
http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/showt...php?p=14508646
for answers, or put your q's there. I for one, don't like integrated systems, but that's a personal observation derived from the experience that in systems like that the speakers are always the weakest link.