Getting a Toslink to analogue conveter for mobo audio - a good or bad idea?

mkk · Oct 13, 2004, 10:18 PM

Since many motherboards today have somewhat decent on-board sound chips but really poor analogue port quality in terms of fidelity and noise, I was thinking that perhaps taking advantage of the optical SPDIF (Toslink) port that most of these boards also have might be interesting. I am only using stereo speakers anyway, so I would only need to get a relatively basic Toslink to analogue stereo converter. Oftenly when asking about these things in a store you get an offer for a box with all sorts of home-theatre gadgets, but there are little convertor boxes too.

But as even the simplest convertor boxes for this does not seem to come around too cheaply, I wonder if anyone has tried it out or has other thoughts about whether this might be a good or bad idea?

**dj_stick** · Oct 14, 2004, 04:20 AM

have a look here: http://www.electricstart.de

mkk · Oct 25, 2004, 11:37 PM

Nobody with any experiences with or ideas about the worth of buying a D/A converter box for this specific type of use? Oh well, they seem hard to come by here in Sweden anyway. Might perhaps just surrender to an Audigy 2 ZS now that the prices has gotten more appealing. It just hurts to go back to Creative...

Oct 13, 2004, 10:18 PM	#1
mkk Cthulhu/Dagon 2012 Join Date: Oct 2003 Location: Gefle, Sweden Posts: 4,489 Rep Power: 132 System Specs	Getting a Toslink to analogue conveter for mobo audio - a good or bad idea? Since many motherboards today have somewhat decent on-board sound chips but really poor analogue port quality in terms of fidelity and noise, I was thinking that perhaps taking advantage of the optical SPDIF (Toslink) port that most of these boards also have might be interesting. I am only using stereo speakers anyway, so I would only need to get a relatively basic Toslink to analogue stereo converter. Oftenly when asking about these things in a store you get an offer for a box with all sorts of home-theatre gadgets, but there are little convertor boxes too. But as even the simplest convertor boxes for this does not seem to come around too cheaply, I wonder if anyone has tried it out or has other thoughts about whether this might be a good or bad idea?

Oct 25, 2004, 11:37 PM	Thread Starter #3
mkk Cthulhu/Dagon 2012 Join Date: Oct 2003 Location: Gefle, Sweden Posts: 4,489 Rep Power: 132 System Specs	Nobody with any experiences with or ideas about the worth of buying a D/A converter box for this specific type of use? Oh well, they seem hard to come by here in Sweden anyway. Might perhaps just surrender to an Audigy 2 ZS now that the prices has gotten more appealing. It just hurts to go back to Creative...