[cooledwhip]

I just bought a pair of Astro A40's for PC gaming, I love them but to get the full experience, I would need the mixamp. I can buy a mixamp for $50, this is not the concern though. One of the Astro experts on the website I talked to, said if I wanted the mixamp to work for my PC it would need to support Dolby Digital Live and have an optical port. The person I talked to said I have to bring it to a computer tech store so they can figure out if it supports it. I honestly doubt I have to bring it to them. Can I find out myself? I have a Nvidia High Definition Audio and a Realtek High Definition Audio. Thanks!

 

[PurpleAngel]

  I just bought a pair of Astro A40's for PC gaming, I love them but to get the full experience, I would need the mix-amp. I can buy a mix-amp for $50, this is not the concern though. One of the Astro experts on the website I talked to, said if I wanted the mix-amp to work for my PC it would need to support Dolby Digital Live and have an optical port. The person I talked to said I have to bring it to a computer tech store so they can figure out if it supports it. I honestly doubt I have to bring it to them. Can I find out myself? I have a Nvidia High Definition Audio and a Realtek High Definition Audio. Thanks!

 
It would help to know the make and model of the motherboard.
Or is your computer a pre-built store bought unit?
 
The Asus Xonar DG ($18-$28) or DGX ($28-$38) sound cards cost less then the Astro Mix-amp and comes with Dolby Headphone surround sound.
So no need for the Mix-amp

 

[cooledwhip]

Well I have an Alienware X51, Andromeda R5 model. I bought it online and I think it let me customize a few things but not too much. It has 8 gb if that matters. I don't know what motherboard I have. Is building your own computer hard? Or upgrading parts? Is there another forum I can go to where it talks about building your own computer? Thanks!

 

[PurpleAngel]

  Well I have an Alienware X51, Andromeda R5 model. I bought it online and I think it let me customize a few things but not too much. It has 8GB if that matters. I don't know what motherboard I have. Is building your own computer hard? Or upgrading parts? Is there another forum I can go to where it talks about building your own computer? Thanks!

 
I'm going to guess(?) you computer did not come with DDL (Dolby Digital Live).
All I can figure out about the motherboard is it uses the Nvidia chip-set.
You could get the Asus Xonar DG/DGX and try to install it yourself.
Or for around $80 you could get an external USB sound card, would not have to open the computer to install it.
To me building a PC is easy, been doing it off and on for the past 18 years.
I'm sure there are lots of forums that talk about how to build PCs, have no idea where they are.

 

[cooledwhip]

Are you sure my computer doesn't support surround sound? I was playign around with the settings and I saw the Realtek thing and it had somethign with the speaker set up, I could choose 7.1 surround and 5.1 surround. They both sounded awesome when it let me test them. Is that DDL or not? It was dell audio by Realtek, then the section was MaxxAudio.

 

[PurpleAngel]

  Are you sure my computer doesn't support surround sound? I was playing around with the settings and I saw the Realtek thing and it had something with the speaker set up, I could choose 7.1 surround and 5.1 surround. They both sounded awesome when it let me test them. Is that DDL or not? It was dell audio by Realtek, then the section was MaxxAudio.

 
DDL is one feature of Dolby that will compress up to 6-channels of digital audio, so it can be sent thru a S/PDIF (optical or coaxial) cable.
Otherwise without compression, only 2-channel s of digital audio can be sent thru S/PDIF.
And the Mix-amp connects using optical cable.
Realtek audio software might do surround sound, but does not normally come with any compression software.

 

[cooledwhip]

Here we go. My friend gets a pretty good discount at CDW and I was looking through what they had, I found some what look like external sound cards. There are a few on there so I put the link to the one I was looking for and the list of sound cards. Thanks

 

https://www.cdw.com/shop/products/SIIG-USB-SoundWave-7.1-Pro-sound-card/1375680.aspx

 

https://www.cdw.com/shop/search/results.aspx?pCurrent=2&pPage=1&wclss=A84&enkwrd=sound%20card&searchscope=ALL

 

[TsukiNick]

Honestly Dolby Digital Live is a pain in the neck, quite a noticeable delay in the audio whenever I used it.

I own that USB soundwave pro, it hiccups a bit during playback and didnt have dolby live from what I remember, not to mention a ton of noise and was ridiculously loud with its 3.5mm jack

I agree with a previous poster and recommend the Asus Xonar DG or DGX (DGX is for PCs with PCIE. New ones) then just hook them up analog to the card, no latency issues and a lot cheaper