SPDIF-Out or Speakers

[William2345]

Hi I have sound blaster z and logitech z906. I want to ask please which is better for sound using SPDIF-Out or Speakers ?

 

Also choosing the encoder Dolby or DTS does not make the Z906 speaker decoder to led on.

 

 

[ShearMe]

For surround, I'd recommend against S/PDIF because it has limited bandwidth for all those channels. The formats for surround over S/PDIF are also effectively defunct in modern times, which makes them difficult to use.

[cmndr]

If you're asking about spdif vs aux, spdif wins. Both can do 2 channels at "full quality" and can sorta kinda pass through 5 channels with some information loss.

If you're asking about spdif vs multiple aux cables, multiple aux cables will put out more data.

[William2345]

1 hour ago, cmndr said:

If you're asking about spdif vs aux, spdif wins. Both can do 2 channels at "full quality" and can sorta kinda pass through 5 channels with some information loss.

If you're asking about spdif vs multiple aux cables, multiple aux cables will put out more data.

No the sound blaster software has two options speakers and spdif both connected output using same optical cable but I dont know which is better ?

[cmndr]

If you're referring to Dolby vs DTS, it's pretty much a wash either way, go with whatever sounds better to you. I personally prefer some of the older implementations of DTS (e.g. Neural:X) over their Dolby equivalent (Dolby Surround). At the same time for the newer implementations, I prefer Dolby Atmos to DTS:X. The difference is small enough that if I changed a setting and forgot about it... I might not care/notice for a year.

Both do pretty much the same thing in a slightly different way. Some things will sound better with one or the other but not by much. They usually take a lower level signal (think 2 channels) and aim to upmix it to 5 channels (or 6 or 7 or 11).

 

With that said, if you mean spdif vs aux, using spdif will send a digital signal to your speakers instead of an analog (probably doesn't matter a ton) and use the DAC on the speaker set instead of the one in the sound card (meaning that outside of some potential software features, the soundcard isn't being used). For what it's worth soundcards are mostly pointless in 2020 (Windows cut away most of their benefits with Visa) with much of their benefit being noise isolation from the motherboard and (potentially) better amps (both often better achieved with an external amp/DAC or even an AVR).

[cmndr]

Doing a bit of digging into your speaker's manual and making educated guesses (I could be wrong).

https://www.logitech.com/assets/36226/z906620-002920006ug403.pdf

If you plug in from your PC using just one cable (so SPDIF or aux) you'll probably want to go into SPIF or the RCA pair (you can get aux to RCA adapters for cheap). If you plug in only one of the 3 wires for the section on page 6, my guess is that you'll only send signals to the L+R speaker pair.

Note that my general view on surround sound systems is that they're not worth doing until you're spending A LOT more on your gear (or you're buying used at a very low price). Modern AVRs just have you plug in a single HDMI cable and it's mostly idiot proofed.

 

You only "need" Dolby/DTS when putting out a partial/compressed signal (so 2 channels instead  of 5).