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arttext
15th July 2007, 18:16
My HTPC has been build with an Asus A7N8X-X NForce2 mobo with a SPDIF riser card.
The on board sound is Intel's Realtek AC'97. As PA I use a normal Dolby 5.1 tuner/amplifier.
The problem of late is that the SPDIF out sometimes works and sometimes doesn't.On coax that is. On Optical the sound is distorted, it's like it's coming in bytes (what it does of course, but one's not supposed to hear that)
All players (Powerdvd, Gom and Classic) in XP are configured digital out. Realtek's driver has no setting to choose between analog and digital. The cables and amplifier are ok (both optical and digital, I tested them on the same amplifier with a DV-T receiver. So, now for the questions:
1.Do I use the (older) original Asus (for my mobo)realtek drivers or the newest one from realtek, or even the latest sounddrivers for the Nforce2 chipset?

2. Is the sound (pc->SPDIF) processed on the riser card or by the chipset. If it's the riser, it might be a malfunction of the riser card.

3. Or will I be better off with a budget sound card with spdif
(optical or coax) out?

4. Is there a difference in SPDIF out or is it always 96Khz?

arttext
22nd July 2007, 21:01
Problem solved! I just bought an inexepensive trust 5.1 card.
Works fine. Although it's only 48Khz, I don't have any sound distortions any more while watching movies.

arttext

Dr.Khron
23rd July 2007, 12:11
I never trust on-board sound...

Which is kind of silly, since modern mobos tend to have very good quality sound chips. At least your problem was easy to fix.