Buying a new soundcard - need help

[DuDe]

Right, I've bought a home cinema system and placed it in my room, and the next step would obviously be connecting it to my computer. The receiver has two Digital Input jacks, and I was thinking about buying a Creative SB Live! card and using a SPDIF cable to connect it to the receiver, but it seems that this card's SPDIF jack doesn't output in 5.1 surround, unless it's a DTS encoded material like a DVD, which would be useless because my receiver already has a built-in DVD. The question is, what card does output a 5.1 surround sound through a single SPDIF output jack?

 

[-Shadow-]

Right, I've bought a home cinema system and placed it in my room, and the next step would obviously be connecting it to my computer. The receiver has two Digital Input jacks, and I was thinking about buying a Creative SB Live! card and using a SPDIF cable to connect it to the receiver, but it seems that this card's SPDIF jack doesn't output in 5.1 surround, unless it's a DTS encoded material like a DVD, which would be useless because my receiver already has a built-in DVD. The question is, what card does output a 5.1 surround sound through a single SPDIF output jack?

Umm... IMO the Audigy 2 does the job , but im not quite sure .

 

[PsyMan]

Any soundblaster model from SB live 5.1 (not the simple SB live) and above supports it. I recommend a SB audigy since it's quite cheap and has good quality.

 

[Eagle]

Yeah Audigy just makes more sense, SB Live is older and its like buying a 20 gig hard drive when a 160 gig hard drive is the same price.

 

[GogoTheMimic]

If memory serves me correctly, Best Buy is actually running a sale on the Audigy 2 ZS gamer pack thingy this week. For some reason, I can't get to BB's site to verify it though. ;;

EDIT: Newegg has it though. *shrug*

http://www.newegg.com/app/ViewProductDesc.asp?description=29-102-171&depa=0

Or just the regular Audigy 2:

http://www.newegg.com/app/ViewProductDesc.asp?description=29-102-158&depa=0

 

[Gorxon]

The point here is that he wants to transmit 5.1 audio over a single SPDIF cable from games and such. The problem is that the Live/Audigy cards transmit three different signals at once and a normal receiver can only decode one at a time. Hence you will only get stereo when using spdif. When playing a DVD it sends raw audio data from the DVD and a DTS receiver will then decode this. That's why you can get 5.1 sound over a single spdif cable. The Creative speakers use a special cable which transmit all the three signals, and the receiver is of course built for decoding them...

If I am wrong please do correct me

From a guy who knows more about creative cards than about anyone, who hangs around at the Audigy newsgroup:

You cannot alter AC3/DTS signals which are decoded externally, not even to change volume, with the soundcard. The digital out is silenced for the high-resolution DVD Audio formats (which you can only get with A2 or better anyway). You cannot get multichannel game audio if by "digital out option" you mean connection to a coax or optical digital input. You can only get that with a connection to a Digital DIN input or equivalent.

 

[Eagle]

Ah I see what he was looking for, I didnt read the original thread correctly. But yeah if what Goroxon said works than the Audigy will work, still the SB Live is configured the same as the Audigy, it gives three outputs as well. So buying one of those wouldnt solve your problem any more than buying an Audigy would.

 

[AlphaWolf]

Theres only one sound card that can do true 5.1 in games in realtime, and that is the nvidia soundstorm. Unfortunately it needs a lot of bandwidth (yet eats up hardly any CPU) thus it can't work on a PCI port, so it is only sold integrated into some motherboards. It is truely a superior soundcard though, the creative cards are probably the worst cards you can get if you use a digital sound system.

EDIT: Then again theres also another sound card which I have heard of that isn't out yet made by pcmedia which also does realtime dde, but unfortunately it also is only going to be sold as being integrated into motherboards.

 

[PsyMan]

This whole thing is quite confusing. Since DuDe said that he already has a SPDIF cable to connect his card to the receiver the connection is not the problem. From what I can understand he wants a card that already has a built-in DTS decoder. Of course I can be wrong :\

 

[DuDe]

No, I want a card that can output all 6 channels through a single SPDIF jack. From what I've seen, the Live! or the Audigy card don't do that, they output only the left and the right channel, which obviously sucks.

 

[sheik124]

DuDe, i think i can help with that, i asked a hell of a lot about Creative's weird ass spdif implementation on their cards (all of them)
any creative cards with SPDIF will instead of having the standard "yellow white red" RCA style SPDIF connector will use a minijack, like a headphone plug. you'll need a 2.5mm (i think they are) to RCA converter plug, they have em at RadioShacks here, oh, and if you can find a RadioShack in Israel, tell me! i'll find it useful when i go for vacation their next summer!

 

[Jakob]

Theres only one sound card that can do true 5.1 in games in realtime, and that is the nvidia soundstorm. Unfortunately it needs a lot of bandwidth (yet eats up hardly any CPU) thus it can't work on a PCI port, so it is only sold integrated into some motherboards. It is truely a superior soundcard though, the creative cards are probably the worst cards you can get if you use a digital sound system.

EDIT: Then again theres also another sound card which I have heard of that isn't out yet made by pcmedia which also does realtime dde, but unfortunately it also is only going to be sold as being integrated into motherboards.

I'm sure creative will have a pci-express offering that does the job soon enough.. seems logical, it's all PCI's fault, the PCI-Express specs have been around for years, but no one got off their asses to implement them til recently.

 

[Gorxon]

DuDe, i think i can help with that, i asked a hell of a lot about Creative's weird ass spdif implementation on their cards (all of them)
any creative cards with SPDIF will instead of having the standard "yellow white red" RCA style SPDIF connector will use a minijack, like a headphone plug. you'll need a 2.5mm (i think they are) to RCA converter plug, they have em at RadioShacks here, oh, and if you can find a RadioShack in Israel, tell me! i'll find it useful when i go for vacation their next summer!

You misunderstand the issue here. Connecting a digital out on a sound card is something everyone can do. Besides, it's a 3.5mm jack, not 2.5. I suggest you reread the thread :whistling

 

[AlphaWolf]

No, I want a card that can output all 6 channels through a single SPDIF jack. From what I've seen, the Live! or the Audigy card don't do that, they output only the left and the right channel, which obviously sucks.

You are exactly right. A lot of sound cards out there have an SPDIF port, but they only do two channel stereo sound through raw PCM stream. On most soundcards, this is still better than using a cheesy little analog cable, except on creative cards, which somehow or another made the digital port sound like crap, you might be better off using an analog cable on those, depends on how much other devices, e.g. your hard drive or cdrom drive, interfere with your sound.

When your sound comes through a digital port, interference from other devices in your PC will never cause audio distortions.

I'm sure creative will have a pci-express offering that does the job soon enough.. seems logical, it's all PCI's fault, the PCI-Express specs have been around for years, but no one got off their asses to implement them til recently.

Nope, they don't even plan on it either. Creative has their own proprietary digital port that is patented to hell and back and isn't compatible with SPDIF and only works with a few select creative brand speaker systems which happen to be overpriced and sound like shit, which completely defeats the purpose.

The fact that the nvidia soundstorm has DDE doesn't make it need all of that bandwidth though, the reason the soundstorm needs more bandwidth is because all of the audio processing it does (DDE doesn't need a lot of bandwidth really.) Think of it in terms of the difference between a PCI video card vs an AGP video card.

Bottom line is, forget about 6 channel digital audio unless nvidia makes a PCI express version of the soundstorm (forget about creative ever doing it.) Thus far nvidia hasn't even said whether or not they intend to so, so everybody is SOL for now.

 

[AlphaWolf]

FWIW, I found out yesterday that the new motherboard I just bought includes a soundcard that does dolby digital encoding. Doesn't seem quite up to spec with a soundstorm, but as it currently is this card has very good sound quality and does appear to do true digital surround, though I've yet to put it to the test with any games.

The onboard sound system for this board is called a "RealTek High Definition Audio System." Seems to support EAX among some other miscelaneous things. It came with an intel D915PBL motherboard.