Digital sound card

Jordan5372

I am looking for a sound card that will support the digital optical cable ( square connection) what is the cheapest option for this?

i want to connect my new build up to the 5.1 surround sound so looking for a sound card i can do this with.

Cheers,

J

sink

The optical connection you are looking for is called TOSlink. The standard signal output is S/PDIF, which is stereo only. For 5.1 sound you need a sound card with either Dolby Digital Live or DTS connect and a receiver capable of decoding them.

I've had a quick look on scan.co.uk and the cheapest they have that is capable of DTS connect is this one at £36.85

http://www.scan.co.uk/products/asus-xonar-ds-71-pci-soundcard-192k-24bit-true-pc-hi-fi-audio-presentation

and the cheapest one capable of Dolby Digital Live is this one at £40.45

http://www.scan.co.uk/products/creative-sound-blaster-recon3d-pci-e-soundcard-51ch-thx-dolby-optical-in-out-oem

There are higher end cards that can output both.

Also beware that these cards will use software encoding which means they use the CPU to compress and encode the sound into 5.1 which means higher CPU usage.

Tea_Bag

its all a conspiracy. analogue is far, far better sound quality.