Onkyo HT-S9100 + Prelude question

[-Dragon-]

Anybody have experience with the Onkyo HT-S9100THX? I got it ordered just trying to make sure I have all the neccessary accessories to make the connection smooth.

I already ordered the replacement speaker wire as I understand the stuff that comes with it is junk.

Looks like it requires the 3.5mm to RCA adapter for analog usage.

Would I be better off using THX optical from my Prelude and let the Onkyo do the digital to analog conversion? My old speakers were Z5500's and I personally found the Preludes DAC/opamps made superior sound but it will probably be less of an issue with the higher end system. The only issue with using an optical cable would be with conversion lag but I don't recall that being an issue when I used it with the Z5500.

Any other tricks I need to know about?

 

[Sycraft]

Well this is a big "it depends." So I don't know which has the better converters. I'd assume the Prelude slightly, but probably not so much that you can hear a difference. However, that doesn't mean you won't end up using the converters on the receiver anyhow. Why? Well if you end up using any features like MultEQ or DSP effects or the like, it'll have to convert the incoming signal back to digital and process it. Some receivers do this no matter what, they don't have an all analogue path. So in that case you use the receiver's converters anyhow, and get a little higher noise floor from the D-A-D-A conversion.

Now, using a digital connection solves all that, of course. However, that is compressed audio. Optical connections can't do uncompressed surround audio, only 2 channel. So what your Prelude does is compress it with either Dolby Digital or DTS and send that. As with any compressed audio process, there's a bit of loss. Enough you can hear? Dunno, have to play with it.

So there isn't an easy solution. Try both ways, I guess. Personally I want their HDMI soundcard so I can have an all digital, multi-channel, uncompressed signal. However, it isn't out yet .

 

[-Dragon-]

I've been quite happy with my prelude so I haven't really been keeping up on their new sound card offerings, but I have seen them when I go to download drivers and such. That said "all digital, multi-channel, uncompressed signal" does sound quite tasty, and I may have to look into that.

 

[UnclePauly09]

I just sold my onkyo 605, and found it to sound almost identical to my x-fi forte, if that helps. You have to move up to the $1000 and above receivers to get the better quality front end. Although I hear most mid-level yamaha's use burr-brown dacs. I don't know if they are the high end burr-browns or not though.

 

[obobski]

I've been quite happy with my prelude so I haven't really been keeping up on their new sound card offerings, but I have seen them when I go to download drivers and such. That said "all digital, multi-channel, uncompressed signal" does sound quite tasty, and I may have to look into that.

your sources are fully lossless, all the time? curious.

any music you're listening to (dont care if its a CD) -> compressed

any games you play -> massively compressed

basically any movies you watch -> heavily compressed

anything online -> compressed beyond recognition

not worth the cash to do multi-ch L-PCM for 128k mp3s or anything close for that matter (generally not worth the cash unless you want to put TrueHD/similar out), as far as conversion lag and other "lets have a hysteria tantrum" topics, don't worry about it, this is 2009, and modern DACs and DSPs are incredibly efficient (and sycraft makes a solid point regarding DA-DA, if the receiver runs like this, you may very well decrease latency by using TOSlink S/PDIF with DDL in lieu of analog)

I just sold my onkyo 605, and found it to sound almost identical to my x-fi forte, if that helps. You have to move up to the $1000 and above receivers to get the better quality front end. Although I hear most mid-level yamaha's use burr-brown dacs. I don't know if they are the high end burr-browns or not though.

better quality relative to?
and you keep pimping yamaha in every thread, with generally ambiguous statements
honestly theres nothing wrong with a "midrange" ~$400-$600 receiver relative to a $1200 receiver, except you may not have audio via HDMI (which is a non-issue for computer users, and is quickly becoming a non-issue overall (as this archaic lack of features is quickly vanishing)

honestly if you want to get into "better front end", you do not want to be talking about $1000 receivers, you want to be talking about $1000+ pre/pro's, because then you'll actually achieve a lower noise floor and probably better power stages (oh, and you will actually get 100wpc if you buy a legitimate amplifier, compared to the ~20-25wpc you'll get out of a modern receiver)

basically to the OP:
since you have the Prelude, you already have DDL/DTS (depending on your OS), go with TOS or coax, and all should be well (just make sure the receiver isn't trying to add its own processing unneccsiarily on top of the X-Fi)

 

[-Dragon-]

Eh, I pre-ordered that new Auzentech card, if there's one thing I've always prided myself on my PCs was not skimping on the human IO portions of the system, i.e. sound, video, keyboard, mouse. I'd rather spend $1000 on a monitor and $300 on CPU than $1000 for the top CPU and only $300 on the monitor. And with any luck the HDMI in/out on the new card may be enough to push me over the edge and actually splurge on that 40/50in flat screen to mount on the wall over my main monitor for extra screen/tv/movie watching real estate >_>

 

[obobski]

Eh, I pre-ordered that new Auzentech card, if there's one thing I've always prided myself on my PCs was not skimping on the human IO portions of the system, i.e. sound, video, keyboard, mouse. I'd rather spend $1000 on a monitor and $300 on CPU than $1000 for the top CPU and only $300 on the monitor. And with any luck the HDMI in/out on the new card may be enough to push me over the edge and actually splurge on that 40/50in flat screen to mount on the wall over my main monitor for extra screen/tv/movie watching real estate >_>

no offense, but its basically worthless, instead of having a few mbit/s data path for ~500kbit data, you've got a few gbit/s data path for the same data (e.g: an inch measured on a ruler is the same size as an inch measured on a meter stick)


and Asus already has a solution available for ~$150 which does HDMI and TrueHD/MA decoding

also, the card isn't a video controller (at least the Asus, haven't seen the Auzen (as it isn't available yet)), so you'd need something else to provide that

 

[Nenu]

I'm using an Onkyo 875 amp with a Prelude and it sounds better using analogue.
As your amp is a lower class than the 875, I anticipate analogue will sound better for you too.

Note that with analogue you will not be able to use the amplifiers speaker setup, you will need to configure equalisation (tone controls), speaker levels etc on the sound card when using the PC.
Still use digital config on the amp for other digital sources.

 

[Sycraft]

your sources are fully lossless, all the time? curious.

Well the main thing to consider related to it is that each time you recompress audio, quality lowers. So just because you are playing 128k MP3, doesn't mean you want to recompress it. In fact, do it enough times, and you'll have garbage even with fairly high quality lossy compression.

So even if most of your audio is compressed, there is reason not to want to compress it again.

Also, CDs are NOT compressed. You may be thinking dynamic range compression which is very common on popular music. However that's not the same thing as lossy data compression.

Thus I can see the appeal.

Now how much does it really matter? I dunno. DTS at 1.5mbps is pretty damn good. I've recoded DVD-A to DTS CD and the results are quite good. However, depending on your gear and ears, maybe you can hear a difference.

Another potential problem is the handling of the birstream signals. DTS and DD were made for movies. There are all sorts of interesting specs with regards to that, not the least of which being that many home receivers re-EQ the signal, and perform dynamic compression on it. Well, this is not something you want for non-movie signals.

Also receiver amps, at least on the higher end, aren't so bad these days. They really will give you the 100+ watts they are rated to, full bandwidth, with low distortion. Where you get a problem normally is with the power supply. It often isn't enough to run more than a couple channels to full at the same time. So you get the rated power so long as only one channel is getting hit. You don't get it if they are all going full blast.

 

[obobski]

Well the main thing to consider related to it is that each time you recompress audio, quality lowers. So just because you are playing 128k MP3, doesn't mean you want to recompress it. In fact, do it enough times, and you'll have garbage even with fairly high quality lossy compression.

So even if most of your audio is compressed, there is reason not to want to compress it again.

Also, CDs are NOT compressed. You may be thinking dynamic range compression which is very common on popular music. However that's not the same thing as lossy data compression.

Thus I can see the appeal.

Now how much does it really matter? I dunno. DTS at 1.5mbps is pretty damn good. I've recoded DVD-A to DTS CD and the results are quite good. However, depending on your gear and ears, maybe you can hear a difference.

Another potential problem is the handling of the birstream signals. DTS and DD were made for movies. There are all sorts of interesting specs with regards to that, not the least of which being that many home receivers re-EQ the signal, and perform dynamic compression on it. Well, this is not something you want for non-movie signals.

Also receiver amps, at least on the higher end, aren't so bad these days. They really will give you the 100+ watts they are rated to, full bandwidth, with low distortion. Where you get a problem normally is with the power supply. It often isn't enough to run more than a couple channels to full at the same time. So you get the rated power so long as only one channel is getting hit. You don't get it if they are all going full blast.

eh, S/PDIF can handle redbook 1411 without an issue, so why is it not good enough for 128k? you can't convince me HDMI is required for anything less than multi-channel MLP or similar

as far as audio, stereo should stay stereo, let the processor resample it after decoding it (PL-IIx or Neo:6) if you're really worried about bitrates (even though DDL gives you what? 640kbit to play with, 128k stereo mp3, yeah it'll still fit, so CMSS or PL-II on the computer's side would be fine as well)

then of course we could argue over what level of compression is audible

as far as "CDs are NOT compressed", I was talking dynamic range (oh so it isn't exactly the same thing as compressing the digital data, you're still compressing the waveform, losing information (oh, you're losing data, look at that), and the result still sounds largely like crap, do you want a cookie for arguing semantics?)


honestly, there is no reason for HDMI unless you need multi-channel L-PCM or a multi-channel lossless container across it (or video, you know, like its spec'd for), S/PDIF is not going to destroy your signal, and using HDMI for 128k mp3s is like throwing a hotdog down a hallway

regarding the receiver comment, depends on what you're calling high end, high end receivers have been delivering rated wattage across all channels for decades, thats why they're high end, but you won't get me to believe a 23 lb box that cost $399 at BB, and is UL spec'd for 450W consumption under load will put out anything approaching its 600W claims, I could give a damn if it can do "one channel to rated if all the others suffer", that isn't legitimate and real multi-channel signals are rarely just sweeps one speaker at a time, so as far as I'm concerned, it stands.

 

[Sycraft]

The problem you run in to with using S/PDIF for stereo and multi-channel is one of having to reconfigure your system all the time. More convenient to have it always feed multi channel audio, since that is how the soundcard is setup, and just use the channels needed.

Dynamic range compression doesn't equate to data loss. You lose dynamic range, of course, but you aren't losing frequency response, or anything like that. It isn't the same kind of loss you get with lossy audio compression. So there is reason not to want to degrade the signal in a different fashion.

No I'm certainly not calling $400 receivers high end. I'm talking like $1000 receivers, receivers in the same price category where you could get pre/pros. They still aren't going to give you the kind of output a well built dedicated amp will (just look at the size of some of them) but they will do a fairly solid job.