[3rdoptic]

is it just to send the digital/optical out to a dedicated surround receiver? im getting ready for doom3 you see

or if anyone can suggest a good/cheap idea that would be nice also..

 

[Mr.Radar]

IIRC, the only card that can send surround-sound via digital outs to external receivers is nVidia's SoundStorm integrated audio on nForce 2 motherboards. The Audigy 3 may also feature this but for now the SoundStorm is the only consumer level solution.

 

[3rdoptic]

dam i have a Nvidia soundstorm except no optical out :/ hmm i need some sort of dolby for doom3.

 

[cadobhuk]

au2 doesnt send out surround sound through its digital out?i read that creative megaworks 510d speakers had digital input and were designed specifically for creative soundcards

 

[Mr.Radar]

Quote:

Originally Posted by 3rdoptic dam i have a Nvidia soundstorm except no optical out :/ hmm i need some sort of dolby for doom3.

All motherboards with SoundStorm have digital outs (coaxial or optical). Some require an add-on board like this one. If your board has coaxial but not optical you can use a converter like this $15 one from RadioShack to convert the coax to optical.

 

[The_Mac]

Quote:

Originally Posted by cadobhuk au2 doesnt send out surround sound through its digital out?i read that creative megaworks 510d speakers had digital input and were designed specifically for creative soundcards

The Audigy2 doesn't have a dolby digital encoder for the digital out, so all it can do it act as a passthrough. It can pass a 2 channel sound stream as digital, or it can pass a pre-encoded digital multichannel stream (like one off a DVD) but it can't take a discrete 6-channel stream and convert it to a digital dolby stream. Good for surround DVD, bad for surround digital gaming. (but good for surround analog gaming)

The Nforce 1 and 2 soundstorm has the capability to encode a multichannel stream in realtime to a dolby digital output, so ANY multichannel sound can be output digitally if you have soundstorm. Movies, games, Windows sounds, surround music, etc. It all gets encoded to dolby digital and then squirted out the digital port.

 

[Damage]

Quote:

Originally Posted by 3rdoptic dam i have a Nvidia soundstorm except no optical out :/ hmm i need some sort of dolby for doom3.

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.

 

[luukas]

It's possible that you won't need the encoding capability for D3, since it has a standalone sound engine, which might include Dolby. Don't take my word for granted, though.

 

[rsaavedra]

Quote:

Originally Posted by The_Mac The Nforce 1 and 2 soundstorm has the capability to encode a multichannel stream in realtime to a dolby digital output, so ANY multichannel sound can be output digitally if you have soundstorm.

Maybe I'm not following, but what are you calling a "multichannel stream"? Do you mean 6 separate channels of analog audio??? If so, the best thing to do would be to connect them directly to the 6 ch. analog inputs of a multichannel receiver/amplifier. Encoding them into one multichannel Dolby digital stream will just deteriorate the quality of the signal, not just because of the A/D conversion, but because Dolby is a lossy encoding method.

 

[Mr.Radar]

SPDIF doesn't allow for more than two PCM channels so you need Dolby Digital encoding to get surround sound through digital connections.

 

[rsaavedra]

Sorry I still don't get it. If you do have more than 2 PCM channels, may I ask where are those coming from? DVD-Audio playback maybe? In other words, what's the source of that "multichannel digital stream" that wasn't Dolby Digital or DTS in the first place, and that you need to make Dolby Digital to pass through a digital connection? I really don't see why you would want to limit yourself to using the digital connection in such a case, except maybe if the goal is precisely to master a Dolby Digital multichanel soundtrack from separate PCM channels, but my guess is that's not what you want to do.

 

[Mr.Radar]

Simplified S/PDIF standard.

SPDIF only allows 2 channel PCM data up to 24/96, or compressed audio.

 

[3rdoptic]

getting back to my main question. Is there a sound card out there that can compress(Mr Radar: i wouldnt really say encode here) 6 channel audio and output it via the spdif connection??

 

[3rdoptic]

Quote:

Connecting Digital Speaker Systems The Digital Out output on your Audigy 2 ZS or Audigy 2 ZS Platinum is continuously active except during DVD-Audio playback. Enabling the Digital Output Only selection in Creative Speaker Settings will disable analog speaker output. It is not necessary to enable Digital Output Only to use the Digital Out connector. Note As with dedicated DVD-Audio player devices, output from DVD-Audio playback is limited to analog output. The digital output is disabled and cannot be used during DVD-Audio playback.

i found what i needed in the audigy online manual.. so it does do multi channel surround through digital out..this is good.. lol what about chaintech av-710 which im getting shipped to me

 

[Mr.Radar]

Where does it say that it outputs multichannel via the digital outs in the A2ZS manual?

Also, the AV-710 doesn't do surround sound over the digital output (unless it's a DVD-V disc and you have digital passthrough enabled).