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This can carry a two-channel PCM (pulse code modulation) signal, or a data-compressed multi-channel signal, such as DTS or Dolby Digital. This connection type can take the form of either RCA coaxial or fiber optic TOSLINK terminated cable. A single AES/EBU connection can transmit a two channel digital signal with a maximum sample rate of 192 kHz and bit depth 24 bit.
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The cable looks like a regular mic cable, but with the added spec of having 110 Ω (ohms) impedance. Let’s take a look at the most common digital audio transmission protocols: AES/EBUĪES/EBU is one of the most common transmission protocols used to transmit digital audio. That being said, one way to understand how to evaluate PCIe cards is to study their I/O options and the types of digital audio transmission protocols that are usually implemented in PCIe audio interfaces. PCIe audio interfaces come in all shapes and sizes with a lot of different purposes and designs so it would be hard to designate products that are among the best on the market as they are usually specifically targeted to do a certain thing and you rarely come across two products that do the same thing.
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Contrary to an external audio interface a PCIe audio interface connects directly to the motherboard if the motherboard has PCIe slots on it – thus in order to mount of these on your computer you need a physical slot to insert it in. PCIe also knows as PCI express is the nowadays standard that replaced older standards such as PCI, PCI-X or AGP. A PCIe/PCI card (abbreviated from Peripheral Component Interconnect Express) is a speedy serial computer bus standard. Thing is, there is a whole other universe of audio interfaces, internal, which come in the form of PCIe (or PCI, if older) cards that are quite different in i/o options than traditional external audio interfaces. We recently took a look at some of the best external audio interfaces on the market.
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