The Search for Bit Perfect Audio - Part Two

Having got nowhere with the Audigy 4 Pro and subsequently listed it on Ebay, it was time to seek out a suitable soundcard that was capable of bit perfect audio without breaking the bank. Having head good reports about soundcards based on VIA's Envy24 audio controller that all support bit perfect audio, it was interesting to learn that there is another chipset that is bit perfect audio capable as well and that is the CMedia 8738/8768 series.

The good news is that there are plenty of soundcards that use this chipset and the even better news is that they are unbelievably cheap, you just need to make sure they have an SPDIF output interface like this one from Ebuyer which sells for under £12. If you want a cheap bit perfect output then this is your answer.

I opted for the Terratec Aureon 7.1 PCI card pictured above which retails for about £30 and is worth every penny when used with the right drivers as the bundled CMedia drivers do not support Bit Perfect Audio even though the chipset does. Fortunately there is an excellent third party solution in the form of the Homebrew Open Source WDM Drivers. These drivers work really well and are very easy to use and install and more importantly offer bit perfect audio.

Only when you have heard Bit Perfect Audio being fed from a PC into a high quality DAC do you realise how good PC Audio can sound. If you are serious about mp3 playback a bit perfect audio soundcard is a must especially given that they are many excellent extrernal DACS available to buy either new, in kit form or second hand on Ebay.

This entry was posted on Wednesday October 31st, 2007 at 5:15 PM and is filed under MP3 Players. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response.

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