nasa

Hi,

I am trying to determine wether to use a usb soundcard or go with the audio provided with my VIA EPIA EN15000 Mini-Itx Motherboard. From my searching it seems there are the following pros with using USB:

Better sound quality (higher S/N ratio, louder volume)

the cons being:

Higher cpu usage
Higher usb bandwidth usage
Higher power usage


The pro that I read about is caused mainly by removing the audio source from the case, thus removing noise from the cpu/harddrive/fan. Everywhere I read this was mentioned in regards to analog signals.

So the question is... Is that still true given a digital signall (via the S/PDIF) connection?

Additionally, how much more cpu is used given a usb sound card like the Roadie?

Thanks for any hints


Nasa

MP3Car.com