[wmf]

i guess im stating the bleeding obvious, but am I going to get a lot better sound both in games, music off the pc, running a dedicated dac via my headphone amp, rather than using a x-fi titanium fatality sound card?. any input would be great, thanks ... i suppose it comes down to what i want to spend on a DAC.

 

[Bloodoath]

I don't know of any 5.1 DACs which is why I keep my sound card for movies and games. I use a mixer/monitor controller to run the DAC and sound card separately and combine the result in to my headphones if I want to hear both or just one or the other. Few DACs also do dolby encoding or decoding at least not the ones usually seen around this site.

 

[jh4db536]

i'll tell you straight out that using a standalone DAC sucks for gaming (example dac1/opus as primary preferred sound device). It provides no hardware acceleration and your computer's performance will probably suffer. However for sound quality any decent standalone DAC should annihilate any soundcard. The solution is to use the features of both and get the benefits of both without the disadvantages. To do this, you would probably use a standalone DAC unit as a DAC only, choose optical in order to isolate it from the computer's dirty switching powersupply/usb power, and use your soundcard/built in on mobo optical out. You will get the hardware acceleration benefits, the computer will only output digital signal relieving it of digital to analog conversion duties (your stand alone unit is superior at this task), and optical isolation will allow the stand alone DAC unit to perform without the computer's foul interferences.

In all honesty i don't notice any difference in sq from the optical output of my "nice soundcard" compared to the one on my mother board. I gave it away to a friend. i dont play games much these days anyway.

 

[ROBSCIX]

Well that is not exactly true. A dedicated DAC is just that, so it has little in the way of features for gaming or anything else. Many around here are using gaming cards to supply the S/Pdif signal to their DAC's. They get all the gaming features of the card but have the sound qaulity of their favorite DAC's.
As for DAC's annihilate any soundcard, It really depends on what units you are talking about. There are good and bad units in both internal and external gear.

BTW, the "foul" interferences must be on of the most misunderstood topics around here. If PSU
s were even close to as dirty as some make them out to be the system would never start up.
To note, if there was noise in the system from this our that source, then it would be measurable on the card. So if I have a card that measures over an external DAC for noise, where is this noise you're refering to?

 

[jh4db536]

i Am encouraging the use of the soundcard or built in combined with a stand alone DAC opposed to only one on its own. Hardware acceleration is the benefit that cant be ignored when it comes to gaming and isnt provided by any external standalone dac that i have tried (maybe the EMU line does it?).

yes, the benefits of a clean regulated linear PS is debatable - i admit i believe in it (which is why im building one to power my netbook and laptop). i think we could agree that using a switching type PS should be avoided in DACs and amps.