Audio Out from Sound Card... (1 Viewer)

[Mike Darksyde]

I am hooking up a small media machine that will play things from my network on the HT downstairs. The output format I have is a 1/8" headphone jack. I do not have SPDIF with this machine, however that could come later...

Is the correct format to use for this, to get a 1/8 to RCA R/L converter, and then go into the receiver? Is this the best option without spdif?

 

[Jason.Soko]

I used to do that, until I got an adapter that allowed digital coax to the soundcards 1/8 digital out. Works great The analog out was so noisy it wasn't even worth it using that method.

 

[PhilBoy]

For a while I ran an analog out to my receiver using a 1/8" stereo headphone extention cable for the length of the run, then used a 1/8" headphone jack to 2 RCA connectors.

No hum. No glum. The connection was a good 20 feet and sounded clean.

 

[BenSC]

Yes, thats the correct way. I also never had any noise issues. I'd recommend picking up a $15 sound card with Optical out. It's just passing digital data, so quality of card is irrelevent.

 

[Mike Darksyde]

Jason.

Can you show me one of these adapters? Perhaps a link to one? Or where you got it?

 

[StephenL]

I'd recommend picking up a $15 sound card with Optical out. It's just passing digital data, so quality of card is irrelevent.

Note that some sound cards resample 44.1KHz audio to 48KHz and Windows Kmixer performs sample rate conversion, preventing bit-perfect output. This is easy to prove by playing a DTS audio CD and sending the digital output to a receiver or prossesor with a DTS decoder. Any resampling will corrupt the bit stream, preventing DTS playback. Some people claim that this resampling is audible on regular Redbook CDs. To achieve bit-perfect output you need a sound card that doesn't resample, a driver that bypasses Windows Kmixer and a player that works with the soundcard and driver. I'm using a Hoontech Soundtrack Audio DSP24 Value soundcard with optional digital I/O bracket, Windows Media Player 9 and Windows Media Audio Lossless compression.