[mythtv-users] Do sound cards help with latency or CPU load?

[Yeechang Lee]

Marco Nelissen <marcone at xs4all.nl> says:
> You say you're "upgrading to surround sound". I take it that means you're
> currently using stereo output, which means mythtv has to decode the
> audio. Switching from that to digital passthrough means that the burden of
> decoding the AC3 audio stream no longer falls on the CPU, so yes, I would
> expect a reduction in CPU load.

Huh. See, I did already expect that when I upgrade to some sort of
surround sound (whether it's the Logitech Z-5500 I've previously
mentioned, or something else), complete with receiver that handles the
Dolby decoding, once I turn the two passthrough options on in
mythfrontend there would be some CPU load easing because the computer
wouldn't have to do *any* work regarding sound output. However, I'd
always thought that if there was a discrete sound card mechanism of
some kind (as opposed to the Intel integrated audio I currently have)
that *that* would handle the stereo decoding, and that the CPU really
wouldn't be doing much work there either. So does this mean that I
likely won't see any system-load easing until I go to 100% Dolby/DTS
passthrough?

-- 
Yeechang Lee <ylee at pobox.com> | +1 650 776 7763 | San Francisco CA US