Home Audio / Re: SPDIF support

[Jarod Wilson]

On Apr 08, 2007, at 20:51, Ben Scott wrote:

> On 4/8/07, Bill McGonigle <bill at bfccomputing.com> wrote:
>> A friend of a friend started an audiophile speaker company, just
>> because of the margins.   ...
>> Apparently everybody is happy with this arrangement, including the
>> customers.
>
>  I've encountered plenty of "audiophiles" who appeared to care more
> about chest-thumping and elitism than anything else, so I suspect
> you're right on the money there -- literally.  Those types feel that
> by spending truly frightening amounts of money on their equipment,
> they're that much better than the likes of a poor unsophisticated
> "consumer" like me.  ~shrug~
>
>  I will say that some of the analysis I have seen against Bose's
> stuff has appeared to be missing the point of said stuff.  One of the
> things Bose does is sell a "system" to people who want something
> small, simple and integrated.  I have seen analyses which criticized
> the individual performance of the pieces (e.g., the satellites), but
> never looked at the whole.  That is not using it the product as it was
> intended.  Even the best screw driver in the world makes a really
> lousy wrench...

Reading between the lines, it seemed to me from the discussion that  
some people considered anything a typical consumer would buy to be  
crap-level, rather than the consumer market consisting of multiple  
levels of quality. I stand by the statement that neither Bose or  
Pioneer Elite are crap-level. They're good Joe Consumer audio  
systems. Never claimed they were audiophile quality, just that  
they're a lot better than a $99 home-theater-in-a-box...

>> Coming back around, I'm wondering what kind of sound I'm actually
>> going to get from my MythTV box, with the integrated sound card.
>
>  The near-universal problem with on-board audio is that it tends to
> pick up all the ambient electrical noise inside the case.  My
> PowerEdge 380 has some sort of Intel "high definition" uber-audio, but
> it really doesn't matter how magic the codec is, because the output
> circuitry picks up my display and disk activity, too.  I can actually
> hear windows dragging.  :)  That appears to be one of the major
> selling point for add-on audio cards -- they use better circuit design
> and are better isolated from system noise.  So if you're limited to
> on-board audio due to space, digital output is likely to make a
> difference there.

Indeed.

/me uses the optical digital output on a Mac Mini these days to feed  
his Yamaha amp, which while possibly something a "true audiophile"  
would scoff at, he feels is considerably better than "crap-level  
consumer"...

-- 
Jarod Wilson
jarod at wilsonet.com


-------------- next part --------------
A non-text attachment was scrubbed...
Name: PGP.sig
Type: application/pgp-signature
Size: 186 bytes
Desc: This is a digitally signed message part
Url : http://mail.gnhlug.org/mailman/private/gnhlug-discuss/attachments/20070408/1c702d8f/PGP.bin