What sound card hardware do you use with your XBMC for Windows configuration?
#1
Question 
All,

I tried in vain to find a thread that discusses the most popular components for building a reliable XBMC system on windows, but there seems to be no central repository for this information. I think that if we get enough people to reply to this thread, we should see a trend indicating the most popular sound cards and that should indicate the most compatible cards. I'd like you to respond back with the following information:
- XBMC revision
- Windows version and service pack
- Sound card brand
- Sound card model
- Bus type (PCI, PCI express, USB)
- Driver version
- Types of outputs on the card
- Whether you are using the analog or digital (coax or toslink.) output
- Your impression of how reliable this card is with XBMC. Please try to be objective here!

Maybe this is a good idea, maybe it's just confusing, either way, Thank You!
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#2
I'll go first:

- 8.10
- Windows XP SP3
- Creative
- Sound blaster x-fi xtreme audio
- PCI express
- 5.10.0.203 (from windows device manager properties)
- 4 stereo analog outs / 1 digital Toslink (optical) out
- Using the digital Toslink output
- This card will output stereo analog audio, and stereo digital audio, but so far I have been unable to get digital surround sound to work.
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#3
- 8.10 and SVN 18000+
- Windows XP SP3
- M-audio
- Delta Audiophile 2496
- PCI
- 5.10.00.5057v3
- 4 stereo analoge outs / 1 digital Toslink (optical) out using break-out cable for S/PDIF and MIDI connections.
- Using the analoge output
- This card will output stereo analog audio, and stereo digital audio

Sound quality is very very good. Using FLAC and a YAMAHA 596 Amp and Tannoy F4 Mercury speakers I cant hear the difference between a CD played on my CDX-592 Yamaha CD player or playing flac files on XBMC
MBP late 2009 - TimeCapsule 2TB - Harmony One+ - Readynas NV+ 8TB RAID5 - Mac Mini late 2009 with 10.9.0 and VDA - Panasonic TX-PG420ES -
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#4
8.10 and svn 18000+
Windows Vista
Creative
X-fi titanium (fatality series)
PCI-express
Most recent driver (don't remember version; it's in the living room)
stereo analogs and toslink
Using toslink

This card is AWESOME. My receiver can only accept AC3, but, so long as I set up XBMC to do digital passthrough for AC3 only, everything works great.

The additional awesome thing about this card is its ability to do Dolby Digital Live and DTS Connect straight out of the box. In theory, once 5.1 analog support is fully running in XBMC, I'll be able to pass that sound to my card, the card will convert it all to Dolby Digital Live, and everything will sound as good as it possible can on my receiver.
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#5
- Daily SVN-build
- Windows Vista SP1
- TEAC(maybe)
- USB headset soundcard with optical out
- USB
- 3,5mm Stereo/optical out (combo)
- Digital (toslink.) output
- Very reliable, use it with my laptop. Just have the soundcard priorities set up correctly and enable what types of passthrough the reciever is capable of in windows.

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#6
- XBMC SVN 18399
- XP SP 3
- Diamond
- XS71DDL
- PCI
- CMIDriver-1.2.3-bin-x86 (3rd party driver that enables real pass-thru and bitperfect) http://code.google.com/p/cmediadrivers/
- analog for 8 channels and 2 toslinks, 1 input and 1 output
- using toslink for movies and music. using one stereo analog out and mic in for karaoke
- this card has been great. if you use the given drivers for any C-Media 8738 / 8768 based soundcards you have a nice pass-thru sound.

My opinion differs from natethomas' on the Dolby Digital Live. It is fine but dont expect a pure signal. With all the processing it does it will actually degrade a signal. Whether you actaully hear this depends on your ear and setup. It is kinda nice for music since it will pass it to all the recievers channel. But you can achieve this but changing to a 5/7 stereo setting on your receiver. I used to think I was getting a pure passthru with this cards stock drivers but I wasnt. There are test files in wav format that will prove this. They will play as white noise if they are decoded by the sound card. There is more reading on the link above. By installing the drivers I completely lose the DDL feature. Which is fine with me. I would rather have purity over features for sound.

-price paid? $30 after a rebate for a pure passthru thanks to the additional driver.
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#7
Not to hijack the thread, but the benefit to DD Live for me, admittedly, is a short-lived one. It will be a simple means of getting 5.1 sound through my current receiver where the only available track is DTS.

The more long term benefit will likely be in DTS Connect. My understanding is that the bitrate of DTS Connect (and all DTS sources that use the maximum allowable bitrate) is demonstrably indistinguishable from source audio.

"In the consumer (home theater) market, AC-3 and DTS are close in terms of audio performance. When the DTS audio track is encoded at its highest legal bitrate (1,536 kbit/s), technical experts rank DTS as perceptually transparent for most audio program material (i.e., indistinguishable to the uncoded source in a double blind test.) Dolby claims its competing AC-3 codec achieves similar transparency at its highest coded bitrate (640 kbit/s). However, in program material available to home consumers (DVD, broadcast and subscription Digital TV), neither AC-3 nor DTS run at its highest allowed bitrate. DVD and broadcast (ATSC) HDTV cap AC-3 bitrate at 448 kbit/s. But even at 448 kbit/s, consumer audio gear already enjoys better audio performance than theatrical (35 mm movie) installations, which are limited to even lower bitrates. When DTS-audio was introduced to the DVD specification, studios authored DVD-movies at DTS's full bitrate (1,536 kbit/s). Later movie titles were almost always encoded at a reduced bitrate of 768 kbit/s, ostensibly to increase the number of audio-tracks on the movie disc. At this reduced rate (768 kbit/s), DTS no longer retains audio transparency."

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DTS_Coherent_Acoustics
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#8
"Not to hijack the thread, but the benefit to DD Live for me, admittedly, is a short-lived one. It will be a simple means of getting 5.1 sound through my current receiver where the only available track is DTS."
Understood since you stated that your receiver does not support DTS.

I thought DTS connect was the same thing as DDL...just the DTS version. It is still a converter that "upconverts" any signal to a DTS
one. Upconverting may be beneficial to some setups but if your receiver has an AC3 or DTS decoder I dont see how these are beneficial at all. They only tamper with the output giving you an altered pass-thru. Unless you are using them for 2 channel sources. They only hurt 5.1 channel sources..being DTS Connect or DDL.
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#9
Assuming we were to continue using only the standard AC3 or DTS codecs that are most commonly used at present, you are correct. However, there seems to be a move to theoretically better and better audio codecs. Dolby TrueHD, PCM, that one that DTS uses that is lossless, etc.

If those codecs keep changing, I'd much prefer having one soundcard and one decoder (XBMC) that could deliver everything to me via DTS Connect, instead of having to upgrade my audio equipment every few years to take the dubious advantage of a higher bitrate that cannot be distinguished from high bitrate DTS in a double blind test.
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#10
Understandable. Everyone is different on what they want out of their systems. Some want ease of use and compatibility. Some want the most they can get out of a system. But I think we are on the same page here.

If loseless were available on PCs I would make the switch and pay the money needed. But it isnt AFAIK. Having done live sound and production work from a portion of my life I may be a bit more picky than some on my audio portion. For me I want the sound to be the way the studio intended it, not the way the chip on my sound card think it should be with its re-encoding. That is just me though.
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#11
- XBMC revision 8.10
- Windows XP SP3
- Sound card brand Creative
- Sound card model audigy 2
- Bus type PCI
- Driver version N/A
- Types of outputs on the card analog an spdif
- coax output spdif pasthrough
- Works nicely if i don't use latest SVN's
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#12
SlaveUnit Wrote:Understandable. Everyone is different on what they want out of their systems. Some want ease of use and compatibility. Some want the most they can get out of a system. But I think we are on the same page here.

If loseless were available on PCs I would make the switch and pay the money needed. But it isnt AFAIK. Having done live sound and production work from a portion of my life I may be a bit more picky than some on my audio portion. For me I want the sound to be the way the studio intended it, not the way the chip on my sound card think it should be with its re-encoding. That is just me though.

This is a good point. I'm no audiophile and have never claimed to be. I like 5.1 sound. I like loudness. I like to be able to distinguish voices. I'm willing to be convinced that certain degrees of sound quality are better than others, but for the most part, I'm all about ease of use.
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#13
- XBMC SVN 18000+
- Windows Vista Premium x64 SP1
- Nvidia 9400 / 8300 onboard Sound
- On board (PCI?)
- Driver 1.00.0.37
- HDMI / SPDIF

I use HDMI audio so I only have to run 1 cable. For the most part it works out well. There is the occasional audio handshake problem with XBMC and my TV. I restart XBMC and it's ok.
Second XBMC is connected to a receiver. There are a few seconds without audio at the beginning when the audio output changes from Multichannel LPCM or DTS. This again, is the HDMI audio handshake issue. I'm sure I can switch to optical and won't have the brief audio drop but I've learn to live with it.
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#14
supernoman,

I cannot seem to find info on the video card that you have. Is it made by Nvidia or another company? Is it a card or integrated into the motherboard? can you reply with a URL to the manufacturer page? Thanks!
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#15
It's an Nforce Chipset. 9400 for intel platform. 8300/8200 for AMD platform. I have one of each. They have build in video with HDMI out on the motherboard.

Gigabyte GA-E7AUM-DS2H (intel)
Asus M3N78-VM (amd)

pasqualz Wrote:supernoman,

I cannot seem to find info on the video card that you have. Is it made by Nvidia or another company? Is it a card or integrated into the motherboard? can you reply with a URL to the manufacturer page? Thanks!
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What sound card hardware do you use with your XBMC for Windows configuration?1