It's all a matter of setting it up correctly....it can work as well as a hardware solution. I am using an X-Mystique in my media center though, I wanted to offload resources from the cpu - it has enough to do.
Is there a solution for me .. as i am getting the Left and Right PCM on my current MB which is a Gigabyte 965P-DS3 with, are there any software solutions now days to solve this ?? Thanks
Nothing has changed since the OP, get a decent soundcard and rid yourself of onboard crappy-ness at the same time
I asked this very question not long ago - I even have the same mobo as yourself. I wanted to use DTS in games and use the 5.1 sound. So I went for this: BGears' b-Enspirer, it does DTS and Dolby Digital on the fly meaning sound is translated into digital with a optical cable - my games are in 5.1 sound and sound awesome! Card cost me $179 Here was my post - received a lot of help too: http://forums.overclockers.com.au/showthread.php?t=593843&highlight=BGears'+b-Enspirer
Thanks for that ... we had the same problem i am just finding it a bit hard to find a local seller who stock these sound cards .. most computer stores just sell creative stuff Thanks
Bit old i know, but i really think - considering the mobos that are pretty commonplace now - that the OP is probably worth updating. I have a p35 based motherboard (GA-P35c-DS3R) which features the Realtek 889a High Definition Audio chipset. This onboard sound solution is perfectly capable of encoding multi channel digital sound on-the-fly, thanks to the DTS Connect technology. I note that mikechong advised the thread regarding this chipset but this appears to have been overlooked. Indeed until i started looking into the chipset's capabilities i was getting ready to shell out $200 odd to implement a solution. Tests within Windows Vista allow you to test output Dolby Digital (which results in my decoder displaying the DD symbol) as well as DTS (also results in the decoder displaying the DTS signal). Oh - and digital sound rocks. Lol, possibly a bit too much... i cant stop messing around with the decoder
Updating is good in theory but I'm not able to update the OP constantly, nor scour for new solutions when I'm happy with my own. Had no plan for that really, just wanted to inform about the root cause. What would work better, is someone who is willing to can make use of the OCAU Wiki to start keeping information on DD/DTS/future solutions, and I can easily link to it from the OP - replacing the original list I made (or to some other comprehensive list).
For gaming in DTS/DD on a budget I'd recommend HT Omega Striker. Otherwise if you have a slightly higher budget check out the Claro/Claro+ models on that page.
What are the main advantages of the Claro over the Striker? Strikers are ~$130, Claros are ~$200, Basically do the Claro's extra features outweigh the extra $70?
Just adding my thanks to the OP. I've been searching for a definitive answer to this for some time but couldn't find anything. Almost made a new thread and saw this stickied up the top!
Thanks dude u just saved me from blowin 400 on digital cables and Z-5500. i'll stick to X540 for the time being. U mentioned Nforce2 boards? which boards have the nforce chipset thing? any of the 780i boards have it?
(ahh zombie thread ... its alive) the nforce 2 was around the time of the xbox. you'd have to get an old athlonXP system with it, so no, don't bother about it too much. add to the fact vista doesnt support the nforce2, it's a dead system now. sure, if it turns on, it will work 100%, and most games can run on a ~1.5ghz athlonXP with an AGP 68000gt still, that will change with the ramping up of graphics cards, and the complete death of AGP support/sales. it had it's day, and while fantastic at the time, nvidia couldn't really get to do it again, they don't make that many motherboards, they dont have the werewithall to get a dolby/dts license to make it, and probably more importantly, they don't make obscene amounts of profit by maunfacturing/outsourcing it or getting other vendors to use it in preference to VIA's ~$3 sound chips,etc. if they were to resurrect the xbox again in 10 years, maybe. ------------- as for the audio part, the chaintech/av-710 has now almost been superseded by the onboard HDMI brigade, i.e. bringing SPDIF output to those PC users who want to use HDMI output for their blu-ray equipped PC's. about the only thing of note is that the wiring can be a bit of an issue, SPDIF output is not just the optical and coax, on a PC, it's also 2 pins, one really. you often just plug in a wire from a video card* (*with HDMI bypass) to the motherboard if you have a HDMI video card that has the feature, and a motherboard with the right ports. if you're super-lucky, it actually works when you plug it in, and you get a 50" TV as your monitor, complete with windows startup chimes. most of the onboard audio chips are very similar to the av-710's style of output, a generally un-amplified 6-ch or 8-ch output, 2 separate inputs, hd-front port support, and support for SPDIF digital output, usually Coax/Optical, depending on the backplane of the motherboard. to make it trouble-free, windows has to really support this entirely, but it does not often do so. DirectX audio sort of skips out on this, the Creative labs cards can 'jiggle' the audio about with crystality and other filters for 2ch stereo in games, but it's really not doing a whole lot there if it's just for HTPC / Blu-ray use, it's just adding overhead to make it sound better. i'm not even sure the creative labs drivers can enhance blu-ray audio if it's SPDIF direct output. perhaps this can require something like AC3Filter to output PCM SPDIF output if you want to use crystality/reverb/EAX reverb/EAX5 reverb/EAX6 reverb/EAX7 reverb on your blu-ray or divx's, or even normalise the volume for TV use, X-Fi's are more than capable of adding the whistles and bells to analog audio, for digital audio, not so much. most HDMI TV sets don't separate DD5.1/DTS (bitstream) into discrete channels, they just work with surround sound, i.e. Dolby Pro-logic (2ch PCM, left, right). but so does AC3Filter, it can handle the task of decoding or re-encoding AC3 on the fly without much lag. for DVD output, no hassles really, the DVD program can downmix to 2ch PCM and output to SPDIF directly, or via the windows audio service. But if you're watching blu-ray, theres complications, some decoders won't allow 3rd party filters due to the DRM policies for HDMI compliancy, so it depends what you want to do. a Blu-ray Player can output 2ch PCM stereo if told to, wether that gets ported directly to the digital output (now the HDMI output) or the PC's speakers, well thats a coin toss there on how the BD software works, and how vista/XP sees your hardware.
What a fantastic read! I bought a Creative Platinum Fatality last year running on an old Hercules 5.1 series speaker system. Splashed out on a set of Z5500's over the weekend, and they sound phenomonal. Needless to say, I found out quicksmart to retain EAX on the gaming front the analogue cables stayed in, which still sounds nice, and DVD playback retains DTS and Dolby. My question is, and it's probably been answered but I am a complete forum nub at searching for stuff, does having a dts / dolby card that can do digital for gaming retain eax enabled games? For reading the posts here, and I think I have this right.. these cards process the EAX effects into the DTS BEFORE it leaves the card, and I am presuming the X-fi platform just doesn't do this. Cheers Eoin edit: http://buy.soundblaster.com/_creati...ail&category=Software&pid=F2222DDN6Z2H2ADDEZD anyone ever tried this solution? Again, many apologies if this has been answered. edit again: http://www.planetamd64.com/index.php?showtopic=36344
Uninstalled the lot Reinstalled Creative Xfi Drivers and Control Audio Console only Installed DDL Full Digital all the way. Love it. Eoin
So to summerise for the new people. All you need is a sound card or on board sound that can do 'Dolby Digital Live' or 'DTS connect', like any motherboard with Realtek ALC889A chipset that has paid for the DDL or DTS connect licence (nforce2 motherboard chipset mentioned in OP did this but that is way old now). AND a set of speakers or receiver that can decode these codecs - Dolby Digital (AC3) or DTS. That means Logitech Z-5500s will do the trick or a home theatre system with a receiver that can decode said codecs. Connect to speakers/receiver using SPDIFoptical or coax and enable Dolby Digital Live in your audio manager software. You should now have digital 5.1 sound all the time.
I think this should be updated with HDMI and videocard hdmi pass thru. Some questions are starting to come up regarding hdmi from video cards and thinking that it will give better soundquality and all sorts of crap, mainly not understanding that hdmi sound from video cards works like onboard digital, in that it does not encode the signal to a DD or DTS signal incorporating 5.1 channels, it simply does pass thru with whatever the original digital signal is.
