Quote:
Originally Posted by 3rdoptic
dam i have a Nvidia soundstorm except no optical out :/ hmm i need some sort of dolby for doom3.
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Then you don't have a possession of a Soundstorm board. Not all nForce1/2 mainboards have the ability to spit out Dolby Digital encoded signals, just the ones with MCP-D southbridge chip for nForce1 and MCP-T southbridge for nForce2. Even then, if your mainboard manufacturer did not provide you with Toslink/COAX connection, then its not really a Soundstorm board, per se (it's got to do with all sorts of output specs). A fairly easy way to determine this is to either read your mainboard manual (or check with the manufactuer's website) or pop open your PC, and look for the southbridge chip-usually located in the middle area between where your PCI slots end and where your mainboard ends. The MCP-T comes with other goodies, such as native FireWire, 6x USB 2.0, and the prementioned real time dolby digital encode.
Having done that and you've confirmed that it does have a MCP-T southbridge chip, there's couple things you can do. First is go to your mainboard manufactuer's website, find your mainboard, and see if they sell the digital output kit. Chances are, if they do have one, it shouldn't cost you more than $10, $15 (it's just a TOSLINK and COAX connector/header kit). If you're the more ambitious type, you can go ahead and make one yourself. Google it for more information, I'm sure there's at least one person out there that has done this operation.
On Audigy, I know that Audigy1/2 does DD
decode and spits that out thorugh the analog surround setup. While the Audigy Drive has both Digital input and output (TOSLINK, IIRC), it can't do any sort of surround encoding save the EAX and maybe (I'm wrong on this I'm certain) Pro Logic.
One of the more pertinent question that surfaced in regards to DD Encoding and soundstorm was the availbility of a stand alone SoundStorm card that does DD Encoding real time ala mainboards. It couldn't be done on a traditional 33MHz PCI bus as it would fully saturate the PCI bus. Remember, your ATA drives, Network card, etc. all runs on the PCI bus. And the bandwidth needed to do DD Encoding would swamp the bus completely. That was that I recalled. AS for the SoundStorm on mainboard? The Dolby Digital Stream goes through the HyperTransport (set at 600MHz on nForce2, IIRC), so it's got more than enough to handle this, the PCI and everything else.