If I get an audigy 2 sound card, will the RCA plugs sound good?

FyreDaug · 10-03-2006, 06:45 PM

Im gonna be running quite the system. 4 speakers for the front with 2 amps. 2 rear speakers with an amp, and a 12" 1000w good sub. How im going to wire it up is simple. Front out from the card will go to 1 amp, which will power 2 front speakers. Then the RCA out from there will go to the other front amp for the other front speakers.
Then the rear out will go RCA's to the sub amp, which has RCA outputs aswell, to the rear amp for the 6x9's I bought.

Im just wondering how good those are going to be coming off the computer with those headphone to RCA converters. Anything else I can look into? I definately dont want this to cause problems with quality.

hornyleprechaun · 10-03-2006, 07:41 PM

I have the audigy 2 ZS and have front/rears/sub coming out of the card.. I suggest you do a search for the kx project drivers for the card.. it has potential for customization if you can understand what to do. I had the sound from the Audigy 2 ZS with the normal drivers and then installed the kx project drivers and the sound was very noticably better.

FyreDaug · 10-03-2006, 08:21 PM

Does the kx drivers work for all audigy or 2zs in particular? I used to have an audigy 2 zs plat I would use optical to go to a home receiver (sig) but I sold that system

scott_fx · 10-03-2006, 08:54 PM

another option is the usb dac

FyreDaug · 10-03-2006, 09:17 PM

yeah but Ive never had any experience with them. Is it common for the computer to make a noise through the rca lines? Id like to keep costs down as much as I can without sacrificing anything. Is there any competing difference between say a Live!, audigy 1,2 or 4 or the xfi fatality one? I only need front/rear outputs which I live would give, but what about quality? I want the best as ive got quite high end stuff to play with

scott_fx · 10-03-2006, 09:28 PM

whats your budget. a good 'budget' system that i've used was a sb live 5.1 pci card, kxproject drivers, audiocontrol 24xs linedriver/xover. the audiocontrol and kx project wer key in that set up for great sound.

FyreDaug · 10-03-2006, 10:23 PM

xover is unnessary. budget would fit a audigy 4 if it makes a difference.

All my amps I have for this system are properly crossed over themselves, so no need

scott_fx · 10-03-2006, 11:31 PM

the x-over is just a higher end component then what is in your amps and it includes a line driver which i have a feeling really beefed up the sq.

i would also look into an echo gina 3g card if your budget can justify it. you'll need to convert the balanced signal to unbalanced but it'll give you high voltage outputs.

FyreDaug · 10-04-2006, 10:41 AM

Well Im not sure if I need higher voltage. I get 3v out from the head unit I had and I didnt have to have the gain past 60%, not sure if higher voltage is needed. Maybe down the line I suppose.

Never heard of an echo gina 3g card. I suppose ill look it up.
What do you mean balanced to unbalanced? Left/Right?

hornyleprechaun · 10-04-2006, 12:34 PM

There is a list of supported SB cards by the kx project drivers.. for the list click here.. going with what scott said.. when you install the kx project drivers for the SB card you will def. notice a difference.

http://kxproject.lugosoft.com/faq.php?language=en#Q15

scott_fx · 10-04-2006, 12:50 PM

Quote: Originally Posted by FyreDaug

Well Im not sure if I need higher voltage. I get 3v out from the head unit I had and I didnt have to have the gain past 60%, not sure if higher voltage is needed. Maybe down the line I suppose.

Never heard of an echo gina 3g card. I suppose ill look it up.
What do you mean balanced to unbalanced? Left/Right?

most sb cards have .5volt outputs, so right there you'll be in for a little bit of a shock. The echo gina 3g card has 5.75volts on it's balanced outputs, the silverstone eb01 dac has about 3volts.

a balanced signal is used in the professional recording industry mainly. Long run, low voltage microphones rely on this technology but it's also used in most mixing equipment with short runs too. Basically an unbalanced signal has your signal on one wire and a ground on the other. A balanced line has a +signal on one wire, an inversed (-signal) on another wire, and then your ground/shield wire. The signal wires are a twisted pair and they are affected by the same outside interferance on each wire. now when it gets to the input of the balanced hardware (i.e. a phaze audio or zapco x-over) It'll inverse the -signal wire so that it now will look like the +signal. while doing this the induced noise that it picked up along it's path of travel will be the exact opposite. now the two signal wires are added together. This will give you a signal that is twice as strong while canceling out the noise [(+n)+(-n)=0 where n=noise]. That is not a concern to you unless you get a phaze/butler tube x-over (I seached for a year before i found one) or a zapco x-over. It is easy to convert a balanced signal to an unbalanced though. all you do is take the -signal pin and ground it to the ground/shiled wire. this however will cut your voltage in half. so you are looking at about 2.5 volts from the echo card

FyreDaug · 10-04-2006, 01:28 PM

Oh damn, I guess I didnt take that into consideration, thanks. So the echo gina card WILL give the 5.75 out or the 2.5? Ive heard of line boosters and stuff, but never used them. Its too bad I cant use my optical HT receiever I used in my last build but its hooked up to the computer im typing on right now, and powers my home theater system, so I cant use optical.

At 0.5volts I COULD have the system up and running but it wont exactly be loud, or very clear until I get this. So I wont let it hold me back, ill continue with the build and do some more research on it.

So answer this if you please:
With 0.5 volts, im gonna need the gains cranked to get some volume outta it. But what about the "digital output" on the audigy cards? Not the optical but the 1/8 connector. Can I use that with any of these xover units?

Maybe I should clear up some info a bit. The front output will go to 1 amp, which will power 2 sets of components (2ohm load this way) and have 4 speakers (8 including tweets) up front.
Rear output will go to sub amp first and then out (because it has a passthrough) to the other amp powering 6x9's in the back.

So that leaves 2 options, either I can use the digital output 1/8 connector from the sound card to an x-over unit that can seperate front/rear left/right (dont need to go all out with 5.1 or anything. 4.1 is fine)

You have to understand I have ZERO experience with any of these units and I feel like an utter noob (because I do know tons about car audio stuff, just not these)

But heres an echo gina on ebay http://cgi.ebay.ca/NEW-ECHO-GINA-3G-...QQcmdZViewItem is that the right unit? (noob eek)

So now I guess Im asking what I should do. I wont sacrifice sound quality, but I suppose ill sacrifice a little more wallet if need be. Let me know on the best unit for this. Damn that half volt output

scott_fx · 10-04-2006, 01:55 PM

you can't use the digital output on the cards for anything but digital. so if you have the money you could got with an alpine pxa-h701 and not worry about output voltages of a soundcard. you'll be getting 4 sets of outputs at 4 volts.

if you go with the gina then you'll be getting slightly more then 2.5v... more like 2.875v (i just made a quick approximation when i said 2.5v in my original thread)

the gina card you linked too is the one i have sitting right next to me. it's a nice unit and also only requires a slim pci card that is attatched to the computer. you wont be sacraficing a lot of space using that card. plus you are sending a digital signal to the break outbox so you can put that really close to your amps to avoid induced noise.

here are the systems i've built and installed in my own car:

a)-sblive 5.1 pci card w/ sb drivers: audio was ok but low and a bit noisy
b)-sblive 5.1 pci card w/ kx drivers: major improvement. there is some ramp up time trying to figure out how to configure the drivers but when you get it dialed in, it sounds a lot better then the sb drivers. (there are even time alignment plugins that will help center your soundstage)
c)-sblive 5.1 pci card w/kx drivers and audiocontrol 24xs linedriver/x-over: if setup 'a' was a '2' on the sq scale, and setup 'b' was a '3' in the sq scale. then setup 'c' would have to be a '6'
d) digital out from the mobo into an alpine pxa-h701: this was probably a '9' on my subjective rating scale. it gave me 4 volt outputs, 1/3 octive 31 band eq, auto time alignment and some nifty dsp effects. very hard to beat this setup but it requires a lot more $$$ and also an added controller that didn't fit in with the theme of my install (oem looking)
e) well right now i am currently rebuilding my system and i have 3 'soundcards' that i'm testing so i can't give you a lot of feedback on this in a practical application. First off i'll be going into a phaze audio tube x-over with balanced inputs and ouputs so i can take advantage of the increased output voltage of most pro audio cards. I am going to be testing the echo gina 3g card, an m-audio audiophile 192 card, as well as a 'douglas' usb dac. I've had a chance to initially test the dac and the gina3g 'cards' with a set of high quality reference headhpones (beyerdynamic dt880's) and my initial impressions were that they are both pretty similar. the dac has a little bit of background noise that will be taken care of once i figure out if i'm going to use it in the car as a pre amp or not (douglas sent me the proper cap to solder on if i was going to use it for that purpose in order to filter out any noise...which isn't that bad to begin with) The echo card is really nice out of the box. both have nice warm sound but i haven't had a chance to put them through there paces yet.

hope this gives you some better understanding of what is possible..or maybe i just confused you :-)

Mañana · 10-04-2006, 02:01 PM

Hmm, the Gina looks quite nice actually =)

But what about the "Requires Genuine Intel Pentium or AMD Athlon CPU" bull****?

scott_fx · 10-04-2006, 02:26 PM

wait, my post was retarded....
# PC System requirements:

* Windows ME/2000/XP
* Genuine Intel Pentium or AMD Athlon CPU
* Motherboard with Intel, AMD, Via, or NVIDIA chipset
* 256 MB RAM (512 MB recommended)

I'll have to try it out on my m10000, right now it's running on my home machine