Digital Coax vs S/PDIF for HT system

[Dave Diller]

I'm finalizing my home theater computer system soon and had a question about my audio.

I recently purchased a Yamaha receiver and some Yamaha speakers - they sound amazing good right now, deep bass and some nice highs and mids also. I'll be purchasing a Bluray drive for my system in the next week or so just to finalize it.

Anyhow, I was wondering about how I Should connect my computer to my receiver. As of right now, I've just got a simple plug going from my audio out to the RCA-style input on my receiver, which will obviously play through all my 5 speakers, but it does not isolate the signal to each channel, so I'm losing my true surround sound. So, I figured I'd either use a digital coax connection or S/PDIF for the audio - my computer can do both out and the receiver can do both in, so that's no problem, and it should let me utilize the 5.1 awesomeness of my system more realistically.

Is there much of a difference between digital coax and S/PDIF, as far as performance goes? I am about 6" short of having a S/PDIF cable long enough, and don't have a digital audio cable at all, so I'll have to buy a cable either way. I tried to run a search online for the differences, but wasn't coming up with much.

Secondly, would I likely notice a difference in audio quality of my on-board audio (Asus P5Q-E motherboard) vs a sound card (was looking at HT Omega Plus+)? I can't justify a sound card for $80 unless it really sounds better...and I don't know, maybe I'm just not an audiophile, or only using on-board audio has tainted me, but I think that it sounds pretty decent already.

Anyhow, any clarification on the above would be great. Thanks!

[chconline Veteran]

Digital coax is a type of S/PDIF interface...

Both are digital interfaces, should be identical in quality. The optical cable should transfer data better and faster but may be vulnerable to excessive bending.

[Dave Diller]

Cool, thanks for the tip - got a digital coax because it was a bit cheaper.

Anyhow, I'm now having some problems getting everything working correctly. I changed my output on the 'Sounds' setting in Vista, but if I stop playing audio, I have to go back into the Sounds menu to get it to work...and it doesn't work until I click on the 'Recording' tab. o.0 Any ideas?

[gummyz]

I'm not an audiophile myself, but I don't mind HD Audio from onboard. To me, $80+ for a sound card is a little too much for my liking when I'm on a budget. I will generally make room in my budget for a sound card, but if I was tight on budget, it would be an after thought to me.

In terms of your sound issue with Vista, I'm sure you're selecting the output, and then clicking on Set As Default. This is how I switch b/w my digital coax to/from analog speaker. I haven't had enough to play around with Vista or run into any of those type of problems to really help you out.

[Dave Diller]

Unfortunately it won't let me select 'Set as Default' on the right output. But when I play some audio, I can see that it's playing correctly, and to the correct output, it just for some reason isn't actually playing it.