It's not MP3's that I'll expect will "blow me away", but rather games that output digital audio, or movies that do DTS or Dolby Digital. I want the computer to send a digital signal to my headphones-receiver. My AR AW791's receiver has a built-in Dolby Digital decoder (ok, so no DTS, but at least there's Dolby Digital).NRG said:
One might argue that it's pointless, because the difference is marginal, but it's the same reason one would scrap their 2004 Honda for a 2008 Prius. It's still a car, it still gets you places, it still needs gas for either car, (albeit Prius obviously has better mileage), but the Prius makes the owner KNOW that they're supposedly getting the "best" performance possible.
Or why one would scrap their 2 speaker system and go out and buy a 5.1 surround sound system. Both output SOUND to the listener, but the 5.1 surround sound system makes the owner KNOW that they're getting the most out of a DVD that can support 5.1 (i.e. Lord of the Rings). [In a more modern sense, upgrading from a 5.1 to an 8.1 system.]
Finally, the point you make about vinyl sounding better than CD's is a legitimate argument and I acknowledge it. My father is also one of these believers, and when I first started high school 5 years ago, he took me to several "audiophile" stores. These aren't your typical speakers that you can get from Logitech or Harmon Kardon, these were $10,000+ PSB speakers, $80,000 Vandersteen speakers... And it was $80,000 for one speaker ("tower" as they called it) alone!
At first I thought it was just the obsession of a selective group of rich people who thought that having more expensive speakers makes yourself feel better. But as I got to research more, and got to sample more speakers from a variety of demo studios / audiophile stores across all of Southern California (primarily Los Angeles and San Diego) I got to "train" my ear, so to speak, to tell the difference between all the speakers. Vandersteen does an excellent job at creating a legitimately-sounding "soundstage" (i.e. imagine yourself in a symphony concert hall, violins would sound more "close" to you, trumpets would sound "farther" to you because trumpeters sit in the back of the hall, whereas violinists sit closer). PSB does a great job at small/medium room acoustics, decent-ok soundstage, but it doesn't kill your ears in the process like most speakers you could get, say at Best BUy, would do.
Anyway, what my dad offered me in that year alone as an entering freshman to high school completely changed my ability to comprehend music, and sound in general. When I took on AP Music Theory, I had a streak of 100% in ear training exercises alone, and when time came for the national AP exam, I passed with a 5 out of 5 on the AP exam, which in the year that I took the exam, only 8% (or 10%, can't remember now) of the nation who took the exam got 5's. It helped, ultimately, when I applied to colleges, which is where I currently stand right now.
ANYWAY, the point of all this is to show that I do know what angle you're coming from, and yes, I acknowledge that in some cases, analog would sound better than digital (i.e. listening to classical music, specifically a symphony, or listening to a soft jazz ensemble piece).
However, when coming back to this thread, I realize that the point is to output digital. What reasons I have already provided should suffice. Had I not provided a reason, the desire to output digital from my computer in SPDIF to my headphones-receiver stands by itself.
So thank you, NRG.
And thanks, Hyrulian. I'll consider getting one of the cable adapters from the eBay seller.
BTW, I would hate to make you travel all the way to Fry's just to check on a cable for a person who you've never even met in real life (though the Southern California Wildfires of 2007 almost made that forcibly possible) but if you do, I'd be indebted to you.
@B: Because there's a difference between cracking a joke and helping out in the same post, or cracking a joke/not helping/shamelessly defending your post and justifying it as a way of helping. SlayerDragon's post was clearly useless, he could've just read the thread and not posted at all, and when he was called out for it, he acted like he was trying to help the whole time, despite the fact that his post was inherently useless to begin with. Meanwhile, people like NRG, Hyrulian, and MrSmiles were there to provide some REAL help.
Zero's post was incredibly useless too, because it's just RealTek's design for the user interface. He made it sound like I was at fault and that I should correct it somehow -- neither solution had any bearing on helping me output SPDIF on my computer -- the user interface window was posted in my opening post to show that there was an option to enable Digital but it was greyed out.
In any case, BeyondUnreal isn't the MLG forums. We're not supposed to see users post crap just so they can be in the internet spotlight, or so they can increase their post count. BeyondUnreal is, or at least, used to be a place where mature gamers would talk about things on a highly intellectual level, or at least on a level that wasn't riddled with ****ing ridiculous immaturity (whee irony in swearing). That's what the IRC channel is for.
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