2011-01-09, 06:52
I'm have 2 original Xboxes running XBMC... then a shared folder on a home PC that is full of music and movies.
CDs sound very good on the Xbox.
FLAC or 320k MP3's sound only fair on recordings I know are high quality.
This must mean the DAC is different, or there's some other middlemen involved when playing digital files rather than from disc.
If I get an Xbox 360 which has an optical output, do you know what limitations/strengths the hardware has? I would hope to output a clean, perfect digital signal to my Denon receiver with an optical cable and let the receiver handle all DAC functions at 24bit/96k.
With CD/DVD's that makes sense. I'm sure any receiver knows these formats so I assume the player is just a reader at this point, relaying the binary data from the disc out it's optical port for the DAC on the other side of the cable to convert. Or am I wrong, maybe there is some conversion that happens?
Here's where it gets tricky for me. The media players (which are just small computers) must decode all manner of formats before it they pass them out the optical port in a more generic format, because a dedicated DAC or receiver is not going to know what a flac or ogg or mp3 is. This seems like a source of quality loss on these devices, correct?
My Goal is to play digital media that is equal to or ideally higher quality than a CD's 16bit/44.1k limitation. With my current configuration my media files are substantially worse than CD's right on the same hardware.
Any input?
CDs sound very good on the Xbox.
FLAC or 320k MP3's sound only fair on recordings I know are high quality.
This must mean the DAC is different, or there's some other middlemen involved when playing digital files rather than from disc.
If I get an Xbox 360 which has an optical output, do you know what limitations/strengths the hardware has? I would hope to output a clean, perfect digital signal to my Denon receiver with an optical cable and let the receiver handle all DAC functions at 24bit/96k.
With CD/DVD's that makes sense. I'm sure any receiver knows these formats so I assume the player is just a reader at this point, relaying the binary data from the disc out it's optical port for the DAC on the other side of the cable to convert. Or am I wrong, maybe there is some conversion that happens?
Here's where it gets tricky for me. The media players (which are just small computers) must decode all manner of formats before it they pass them out the optical port in a more generic format, because a dedicated DAC or receiver is not going to know what a flac or ogg or mp3 is. This seems like a source of quality loss on these devices, correct?
My Goal is to play digital media that is equal to or ideally higher quality than a CD's 16bit/44.1k limitation. With my current configuration my media files are substantially worse than CD's right on the same hardware.
Any input?
