Digital output using emu-tools

jburford · 09-07-2002, 11:50 PM

I am using a SoundblasterLive sound card, and Boston Acoustic digital speakers. Using emu10k, I get output to headphone on analog, and used emu-config -d to switch to digital output for the speakers.

I have no idea how to set this up so that the output is digital on boot up.

Can anyone help me here?

James

pbharris · 09-08-2002, 12:02 AM

hello,
can your put the neccessary commands in /etc/rc.local ?

jburford · 09-08-2002, 01:07 AM

Yes - It works fine, and I should have thought of this. Thanks for your help.

LOVELY speakers - and rather easier to get soundcard and speakers to work than I expected. I thought the drivers might result on a poorer sound than under windows, but this is not at all true......Pink Floyd screaming at the world - all I have to worry about is the neighbours now!
James

MasterC · 09-08-2002, 04:41 AM

jburford, think outside the box

That's a joke btw, just a little bit of geek humor.

Anyway, the box isn't what is going to control the quality of your sound. This is a digital signal being sent to the digital speakers, and be decoded there, so sound quality shouldn't differ from OS to OS, or any other source. The DAC is at the destination, rather than the source, this helps to ensure that the final sound is not "filtered" or "boosted" or anything, but just purely as it was sent from the original source. One of the very good reasons to use Digital products.

Cool

jburford · 09-08-2002, 07:32 AM

I hadn't ever considered what a driver does, beyond the obvious interface to hardware. Fore a sound card using digital speakers, does this mean there is no loss between digital file and speaker (other than cabling or interference issues)?

James

MasterC · 09-08-2002, 07:37 AM

Well it would mean that a binary (1 and 0) signal is sent from the source media (Audio DVD or whatever) through the digital cable on the back of the DVDROM, to the soundcard, which if it's capable of, will carry that digital signal to the digital speakers, where resides a DAC (digital to analog converter) and thats where your sound is made from binary. IF you had say an analog audio cable traveling from your ROM to your soundcard, the signal would (probably) be converted at your soundcard from analog to digital (ADC) then sent to the speakers, resulting in less "quality" loss than if everything was analog.

Does that explain that better? And if anyone has a better example, or can explain it better, feel free.

Cool