I had a Yamaha YMF 724 sound card in my HTPC for a long time now and it worked fine with SPDIF out connection via coaxial to my Proton AS-2631 preamp.
Since the yamaha had problems in Windows XP with the WDM drivers I bought a cheap sound card based on CMI8738 chip (Ennyah DigiSound 6 channels) just to try out XP.
Ennyah claims that their SPDIF is 24 bits compliant and S/N ratio is over 120db.
Unfortunately the Ennyah drivers didnt provided SPDIF out function in XP but still, it was very interesting to compare SPDIF output from both cards.
The test setup is as follow :
Abit BX6-r2 mainboard
P3-750
256 Mo RAM PC133
Radeon VE
Windows ME
Yamaha drivers 1040 (vxd)
Ennyah drivers 2.37 (vxd)
Now for the listening experience, I tried with TopGun Dolby Digital 5.1 soundtrack and The Corrs Live in London (DTS 5.0).
With both discs, the difference appears to be the same. The yamaha has a deeper soundstage with lots of bass but also lots of confusion on the medium and highs. Overall it could be qualified as smothered with big bass.
With the ennyah, everything appears clearer, specially in the mids. Weird enough, the bass are not there at all at least compared to the yamaha, quite confusing. With The corrs, voices and instruments are much more distinct and you can locate them easily on the soundstage. With TopGun, the planes passing from left to right gives an overwhelming experience since you can actually "see" where the plane is just bu listening to it. With the Yamaha everything is drowned in the reactor's bass.
I've been following the various threads here about subjective audio difference in SPDIF out even though the data sent seemed to be equal. Now that I experienced by myself, I can definetely say there is a huge difference between soundcards even when using only SPDIF. My problem is that I'm not really able to tell which one is the best, they do sound different but I have no idea how it should sound. My personnal preference would be for Yamaha's bass associated with the Ennyah's mids and treebles !
For now, I'll keep the ennyah since the clearer mids are more suitable for HC effects and voices perception but I'll be watching for something better
Since the yamaha had problems in Windows XP with the WDM drivers I bought a cheap sound card based on CMI8738 chip (Ennyah DigiSound 6 channels) just to try out XP.
Ennyah claims that their SPDIF is 24 bits compliant and S/N ratio is over 120db.
Unfortunately the Ennyah drivers didnt provided SPDIF out function in XP but still, it was very interesting to compare SPDIF output from both cards.
The test setup is as follow :
Abit BX6-r2 mainboard
P3-750
256 Mo RAM PC133
Radeon VE
Windows ME
Yamaha drivers 1040 (vxd)
Ennyah drivers 2.37 (vxd)
Now for the listening experience, I tried with TopGun Dolby Digital 5.1 soundtrack and The Corrs Live in London (DTS 5.0).
With both discs, the difference appears to be the same. The yamaha has a deeper soundstage with lots of bass but also lots of confusion on the medium and highs. Overall it could be qualified as smothered with big bass.
With the ennyah, everything appears clearer, specially in the mids. Weird enough, the bass are not there at all at least compared to the yamaha, quite confusing. With The corrs, voices and instruments are much more distinct and you can locate them easily on the soundstage. With TopGun, the planes passing from left to right gives an overwhelming experience since you can actually "see" where the plane is just bu listening to it. With the Yamaha everything is drowned in the reactor's bass.
I've been following the various threads here about subjective audio difference in SPDIF out even though the data sent seemed to be equal. Now that I experienced by myself, I can definetely say there is a huge difference between soundcards even when using only SPDIF. My problem is that I'm not really able to tell which one is the best, they do sound different but I have no idea how it should sound. My personnal preference would be for Yamaha's bass associated with the Ennyah's mids and treebles !
For now, I'll keep the ennyah since the clearer mids are more suitable for HC effects and voices perception but I'll be watching for something better