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I want to use a software crossover and send the signals to an Audigy 2 NX. If I tap into the I2S lines before the dac in the Audigy and use my own I2S dacs, can I expect the same quality from every chanel?
Follow Ups:
Hi Klaus:That seems like a great idea... but with the wrong card. Even though you are intercepting the I2S signal before the card's DACs and using your own, you are still subject to what the Audigy 2NX drivers are doing.
It is not clear whether or not using ASIO4ALL with this card successfully prevents resampling everything to 48kHz when playing back RBCD - and many say it does NOT. Now if you are using SRC (Secret Rabbit Code) or a software upsampler and upsampling to 96khZ then you might be ok. But if you are resampling to 88.2 or 176.4 I think you would be out of luck with the Audigy.
For what it's worth, if all of the I2S lines come out of the same codec, they should be "equal quality". Most consumer /pro-sumer multi-channel soundcards nowadays use a better 2 channel DAC for channels 1/2 and a cheaper, lower quality 6-channel DAC for channels 3 through 8.
If I was going to go through the trouble of pulling I2S lines off of a soundcard codec, it would be an ASIO compliant Envy 24HT based card.
Thanks Presto,Audioengener recommended this card for having very good I2S signals, so I thought going this route might be best for my application.
Why would you use an Envy 24HT based card?
Klaus:Audioengineer knows his stuff, so when he says the I2S signals are good coming from the 2 NX, then I'd say he had good reason to say that. However, I am not convinced you can (easily) get 44.1 bit-perfect playback INTO the codec with that card, so the quality of its I2S outputs may become mute. (For the record I've never peeled off I2S signals before a DAC/codec and actually measured them.)
But I like the 24HT because every card it "shows up on" gets pretty good reviews for sound quality and s/n ratio. Examples of the more $$$ 24/HT soundcards are Terratec Aureon 7.1, the Audiotrack Prodigy, or the M-Audio Revolution 7.1. It's on quite a few soundcards actually.
I would avoid the M-Audio Revolution personally (no ASIO functionality for SPDIF output). Chaintek also makes some lower dollar 24HT solutions, but you would need to double check whether or not they are ASIO compliant. All these things depend on whether you want bitperfect 44.1kHz playback and if you want ASIO or not.
Ask Audioengineer what he thinks about the "Via Vinyl" 24HT series of controllers.
He may have some actual board-level experience with them.
Cheers,
Presto
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