Improving poor sound quality despite good pic quality?

[infinite]

Hi,
I have recently built a HTPC around a 2500XP, 512mb, 80Gig etc.
The system uses a Leadtek 2000xp deluxe tuner.

My reception is not perfect, but is mostly fine on tv. The PICTURE quality on the HTPC is pretty much the same, however the audio is rather terrible. Only 1 channel is "listenable". (I'm in Australia)

Do anyone know of a way to improve the audio clarity? It is fine on a cheapo tv next to it. Are TV's just better at dealing with bad audio signals? Has anyone had similar issues and discovered a way around it?

Any help is greatly apprecated. The new system is great apart from bad tv audio!

[Mr.X]

Can you tell us some details?

What sound card are you using?
How is it connected to your capture card?
How is it connected to your stereo or TV?
What exactly is wrong with the sound (in detail)?

[peter]

I don't have a Leadtek card, but have read a few bad things about them from other users on this board.

Have you seen http://kb.snapstream.com/Kb.aspx?kbid=1049

Is that the same Leadtek card you have?

From memory, the issues relating to the Leadtek card were to do with audio issues (but I may have remembered wrongly).

[RobertH]

The entire leadtek 2000xp line was marked as unsupported because the cards were having audio problems and apparently when snapstream asked them about it they said something along the lines of the cards were only designed to work with their software.

[infinite]

Yes, that is the leadtek card I have. It "works" appart from poor quality audio. (ie, audio does work, it's just not so great. Video is fine)

"Can you tell us some details?"

What sound card are you using?
Onboard sound on a gigabyte KT600 board

How is it connected to your capture card?
Audio out on tv card to line in on the onboard sound

How is it connected to your stereo or TV?
It connects from a 3.5 stereo and splits to 2 rca which go in the amp (this part is fine with everything so i'm assuming it's not the problem)

What exactly is wrong with the sound (in detail)?
There is a large amount of white noise and it sounds almost distored (bass in a show makes it worse) yet I have every volume setting everywhere at about halfway, so nothing should be distorting....

[RobertH]

it might very well be the audio coming from your audio source, on most onboard audio chips there isnt any sort of filtering or over voltage protection so if the signal comes in with too much strength it will cause poping, static, and other audio noises.

I would suggest getting one of those inline headphone volume adjusters they make for like walkman headsets and see if lowering the volume on the input makes a difference, short of that I would suggest trying a different soundcard and see if that makes a difference.

the audio problems with the leadtek's only happens when using the device with cable as an input because it has a problem controling the stereo/sap/mono sources and would go nuts or product like english on the left channel and sap on the right.

[infinite]

Ok, thanks for the suggestion. I don't have an inline remote, but i'll try an old SBlive tonight and see if it helps :-)

[Mr.X]

There is a large amount of white noise and it sounds almost distored (bass in a show makes it worse)

You almost definitely have a line-level signal going into a mic or other high-gain input. I don't mean to patronize you if you are experienced in the world of audio and stereos, so if these things I suggest are too obvious and not your problem, just tell me to take a hike...

I'm not sure how old your stereo is and if it's old enough to still have "phono" inputs, but are you sure you haven't plugged the RCA's into a "phono" input on your amplifier rather than an "aux", "tuner", "cd", "tape" or other input. I've seen lots of people do that since even though there's not many record players around, there are still lots of amps with "phono" inputs.

Are you certain the input on the sound card/motherboard is definitely a "line" input and not a "mic" input? Try the other input connector just as an experiment. Also try putting a discman or other line input rather than your tv capture card into that line input on the motherboard just to be sure that it works properly