Surround sound audio question

[clippen05]

Hey everybody so I recently purchased a new headset since my crappy old turtle beachs died (I honestly wasn't too sad) and it offers Dolby Digital Pro Logic IIx and Dolby Headphone surround sound. This is done through by running SPDIF from my PC to the receiver box. However, I am currently running motherboard sound, not a dedicated sound card, therefore SPDIF can only output in stereo to the receiver. (Because there's no Dolby digital live support for motherboard sound and DDL is required to decode 5.1 audio) My headphones receiver box has the option to receive either stereo or Dolby 5.1 sound to convert to Dolby Headphone, so I get sound fine, but I was wondering if upgrading to a sound card with DDL will increase the sound quality (I just wrote sound way to many times) Any input on this matter would be appreciated.

 

[SnowyGamester]

Nope. The thing about S/PDIF is that it uses digital audio which isn't susceptible to noise the same way that 3.5mm/RCA audio is. Same difference as with HDMI/DVI/DisplayPort compared with VGA/Component/Composite. In practise this means that as long as the signal is strong enough for the audio to go through without any sort of stuttering or cutting out then what you get is identical to what is being encoded. The standard audio format supported by S/PDIF is 20 bits however some equipment supports an optional 24 bits, though the issue with that is both the output and input device have to support it. So yeah, you probably aren't going to get anything different other than the surround support. But that's the cool thing about digital transmission...you can cheap out and still get the best result. Which is why you shouldn't pay more than a few bucks for a HDMI cable - those $100 cables are scams that prey on the misinformed. That wasn't really relevant but really everybody should be told that.