Quote:
Originally Posted by grs
Its a trade off between
1) USB; no noise and low bitrate
2) ANALOG; Slight noise floor and higher bitrate.
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I did a test about a month ago where I recorded via S/PDIF and ran the resulting wave files through a program that calculates effective bit depth -- the number of bits that are changing in the audio. Long story short, the S/PDIF output on the Virus appears to me to deliver 24 bit audio. I found the same for the USB output. This in spite of the fact that the Virus appears as a 16-bit audio interface to the OS (when used as a sound card / audio interface).
The docs for the Virus claim that the analog outs are 192KHz/24bits, but I think that's kind of silly on the face of it. I think it's clear that the Virus is not operating internally at 192KHz. The parts themselves -- the actual converter chips -- may have such a capability, but it's hard for me to see how the Virus could be making use of it.
So, from what I'm able to measure, it's probably not true that the USB/SPDIF outputs have any kind of intrinsic disadvantage compared to the analog outs (which are also fine outputs).
-Luddy