Direct to power amp: best audio card? - Page 4

You have me wondering... how big a deal is Audyssey? Really?

If you've already taken the time to use REW and apply the appropriate filters via a Behringer Feedback Destroyer Pro for a flat-ish inroom response... What do you gain with Audyssey (or ARC, or Ypao)?

In my experience, not much. To hear others talk about it, Audyssey is a huge deal, but not for me.

I went from an x-meridian direct driving a bunch of aragon and palladium amps and two subs (a small one and an SVS PB2+) with no room-correction to an HDMI connected Denon 4311ci driving the same amps and subs. My room is very large - roughly 20x25x10 plus vaulted ceilings up to about 20' feet at the peak. The Denon has Multi-EQ XT32 and will also EQ two subs. I don't notice a significant difference in everyday listening from my prior configuration, nor when toggling Audyssey on and off. The only significant difference was going from 7.2 to 9.2 - the extra front wide speakers make movies sound bigger.

This is probably a minority opinion, but for me Audyssey room-correction has been a big fat 'meh.'
Edited by JerryW - 11/14/12 at 10:52pm

I have been running PC audio directly to my amp for a while now and have been thrilled with the sound. My equipment:

HTPC with Asus Xonar D2X
Bryston 4B SST for the fronts
Emotiva UPA-2 for the rears
MartinLogan Prodigy fronts
MartinLogan Aeon i rears
MartinLogan Descent subwoofer

No receiver, no center.

The sound is a huge step up from the Pioneer Elite receiver I was using previously as a preamp/processor. The detail from the D2X is just amazing, and really not surprising if you compare the specs of the card with a typical receiver, especially when it comes to signal-to-noise ratio (118dB).

If you think about how little a high-end sound card does compared to a typical receiver, it's not surprising it performs so much better in the one crucial area (sound). There's just not much margin for using expensive components in a receiver. The D2X uses Burr-Brown PCM1796 DACs, the best in the business.

Some comments:

1. To the guy saying connect the mobo's analogue outs directly - horrible, horrible advice.
2. The Asus cards handle bass management.
3. I love the D2X, but the Essense ST + H6 is supposed to be even better (124dB). One of the main downsides of the D2X is that the analogue outputs are 3.5mm stereo jacks instead of mono RCA outs.
4. My previous Pioneer receiver had Audyssey room EQ but I don't miss it.
5. You CAN connect an external audio source (with one big limitation). I have my PS3's SPDIF output connected to the sound card's line-in, it's digital, but only 2-channel (AC3/DTS doesn't work).

Nice setup Brian!

I run and $200 asus stx card directly to heavily modified tube monoblock amps using the computer's volume control- used primarily for audio, but also blu-rays and dvds. It ablolutely trashes anything I have previously used, including some very high-end, very expensive DACs, passive preamps, etc. I'm not sure what it is - it may be the the direct connection, or that the soundcard's dac is that good.

Mostly ease of use as well as having that room correction being applied for all your sources. Don't get me wrong, I'm still undecided, just that it isn't as clear cut as it used to be. So for instance, Xbox360 at the moment is being fed into my HTPC via line in and then out through the power amp, it means my HTPC has to be turned on whenever I want to hear sound when gaming. The other convenience of the AVR route is that I'd connect the Xbox + HTPC to the AVR and then route that to either the TV or the projector. At present, only my HTPC goes to the projector, and there have been times when it would have been nice to play Forza on the bigger projector screen. My projector is old so it doesn't have digital inputs so I'd have to run VGA out from the HTPC and the Xbox via a switch. This problem would be mitigated by a newer projector as well, which all adds into the why I have not yet fully decided. I don't have much scope currently to add acoustic treatments to my room, so that is why the room correction appeals.

In any case, can you elaborate on your REW + Behringer FBD Pro setup for home theatre usage?

I'm using the Behringer as a parametric EQ for the subwoofer channel. It's been a godsend in taming the boom out, yet retaining the low end of my eD A5-350.

The curve is set using test tones generated thru REW, and measuring with a microphone.

Righto, thanks for that... I was confused as I thought you were using it for full 5.1 or more and given that it only has stereo inputs, was kinda wondering if there was some special undocumented feature.

Might be something for me to consider and should be good for dual subs as well? As in - can it equalise each sub independently?

Yes, it's two channel. Each one is completely independent.

Coolies. I think the sub is the trickiest part of the audio chain to get sounding right so I may stick with direct to power amps and worry about getting the 5 other channels right at another time. Every time I read about AVR's I hear stories of overheating and other things that give me pause... but then the convenience is still there as is the ease of running room correction etc. I have time anyway, so for now I can sit tight and do some more reading.

There's one piece here that I can't quite wrap my head around so I am hoping for some help (I find this whole architecture intriguing).

All of my blu-ray rips are MKVs with the HD audio soundtrack (DTS-HD or Dolby True-HD). Right now that just gets passed to my AVR and decoded there. I can have all my movies in whatever frontend I want (I just use WMC). I also have DVD rips with DD/DTS and live TV with DD5.1. Obviously in this setup, something needs needs to decode the DD/DTS/DTS-MA/True-HD. I am going to guess these software decoders are not something open source but require TMT or something for DTS-MA/True-HD? And what about DD/DTS? Can Windows do that natively or do I need some other frontend? For Live TV (CableCard) there is only one frontend -- WMC.

I don't want to have to use a specific front-end and most of all not commercial to get the decoding done in software.

I gotta say though this kind of setup would make a lot of things easier -- like Zone 2/3 audio from any source being played on the PC w/o jumping through hoops.

I know, I too was confused on how the 'decoding' is handled.

From the source (disk, mkv, etc), the audio tracks are compressed.

If you are used to "bitstreaming" that compressed audio track is fed over HDMI to a AVR that decompresses it, then routes the signals appropriately.

The decompression task is laughably easy to do via software.

XBMC, JRiver, WMC, Plex, etc, all have the necessary software to decode all the surround sound formats. This data is then fed to the software for your audio card, then converted to analog signal on the card itself.

Yes, Windows Media Center can be setup to decode lossless audio tracks and output that to your audio card.

You will be able to play your BR rips with DTS-HD in WMC.