AC'97 Optical vs Audigy Optical out -> Alpine H701

**kwchan** · 12-29-2007, 03:36 AM

My motherboard comes with SPDIF optical out (AC'97 chipset) that can connect to my Alpine H701 processor.

I am seriously considering if I should add an Audigy PCI card and use its optical out instead of the onboard one.

I understand that i will miss out ASIO and bit perfect, but does it matter if I play solely 320k MP3?

I have an audigy card lying around but adding a PCI card really take up space and there is limited choice of casing that support full height PCI card

**kwchan** · 12-30-2007, 09:16 AM

btw, the sound processing will be solely handled by my Alpine processor, in that case, does the sound card matters at all?

**kwchan** · 01-02-2008, 07:17 AM

anyone?

**durwood** · 01-02-2008, 08:34 AM

It depends on the codec. If your audio is using a chipset that allows bit-perfect, then it might be better than the audigy, but I thought there was a way with audigy cards to do something similar called "bit accurate".

On my older motherboards, I thought the Audigy card sounded better even with spdif than onboard, but newer boards with HD definition codecs seem pretty equivalent in terms of digital out only. When using digital out, really there are only a few things to consider that might impact sound quality, clocking and jitter.

**kwchan** · 01-02-2008, 12:50 PM

My board comes with Realtek ALC202A chipset with SPDIF output, i can hook it up to my Alpine H701 with optical cable

http://www.realtek.com.tw/products/p...nn=4&ProdID=53

bit perfect only found in newer chipset like ACL880 & ACL882 only
http://www.mp3car.com/wiki/index.php/Bit-perfect

i am not sure if i will miss anything if there is no bit-perfect nor ASIO, I will be using the PC to playback 320K MP3 only

**crooper** · 01-06-2008, 04:38 PM

This may or may not be an issue, but most onboard sound setups use the CPU for processing, which add-on boards have their own processors. I don't know if this really matters for just spdif out or just for gaming.

**Felix509** · 01-06-2008, 04:46 PM

saying MP3 and bitperfect in the same post is just Wrong..

even 320Kb/s is missing half the data from the original, there is no need to go looking for better SQ than the motherboard's built in sound until you have a better source...

What good is bit perfect if you only half half the bits to start with...

This is my personal opinion, By the way...