It's been a short while and I need some refreshing on my tech knowledge...
Years ago, prior to turning my gaming rig into my mediacenter, I had an Asus Xonar Essence STX soundcard running audio through SPDIF (TOSLINK) to my Sony STR-DN1050 receiver (which supports 7.1 audio). That being said, I'm only running a 5.1 speaker setup. (This is important info for the people that can accurately answer this question.)
Once my system became a mediaserver, I removed the Xonar soundcard. The A/V signal path now looks like this:
Win10 -> nVidia RTX 2070Super -> HDMI 2.1 cable -> HDMI ARC port on receiver --> Receiver HDMI out to FHD projector.
Now here comes the million dollar question: If I reinstall the soundcard, will I realize any benefit from trying to route audio through the Asus instead of letting it simply go through the HDMI ARC? Based on this Tom's Guide article, I'm led to believe that there will be no tangible benefits to putting the soundcard back in the system based on the following:
Experts, set me straight.
Years ago, prior to turning my gaming rig into my mediacenter, I had an Asus Xonar Essence STX soundcard running audio through SPDIF (TOSLINK) to my Sony STR-DN1050 receiver (which supports 7.1 audio). That being said, I'm only running a 5.1 speaker setup. (This is important info for the people that can accurately answer this question.)
Once my system became a mediaserver, I removed the Xonar soundcard. The A/V signal path now looks like this:
Win10 -> nVidia RTX 2070Super -> HDMI 2.1 cable -> HDMI ARC port on receiver --> Receiver HDMI out to FHD projector.
Now here comes the million dollar question: If I reinstall the soundcard, will I realize any benefit from trying to route audio through the Asus instead of letting it simply go through the HDMI ARC? Based on this Tom's Guide article, I'm led to believe that there will be no tangible benefits to putting the soundcard back in the system based on the following:
- the audio is being generated by Windows, passed through the video card, and onto the receiver where it is decoded.
- Is the mobo's onboard audio chipset even being used? Or is it completely bypassed? (I suppose I could test that by disabling it in UEFI 🤔)
- SPDIF/TOSLINK only supports up to 5.1 audio streams, same as HDMI ARC
Experts, set me straight.