[jiiteepee]

Anyone tried/using this utility.

"This is a realtime AC3 encoder that allows you to use spdif passthru with sound from any source. It takes it's source from ASIO in the DSP. It is a console app."

Should work least with kX ASIO and original Creative ASIO drivers.


jiitee

 

[Sycraft]

The two major problems I see is that you'll be introducing latency (the encoding time aside, AC-3 is not a no-latency proposition) and eating up a fair bit of CPU. I suppose it's worth while if you have a surround reciever that only accepts surround input via AC-3, but other than that I think I'd stay away, sepically since AC-3 is a lossy format.

 

[hifiguru]

Yes I am using it with Audigy2 ZS on an old VIA133 system, works surprisingly well, as you can access the ASIO control panel, you can set the latency.
The default (highest) bitrate it sends is DD5.1 @ 650kb/s @ 48KHz which is twice that of DVD. And believe me this interface totally brightens up the sound, no apparent low bitrate issues!
For video applications, well any decent player (mplayerc) will provide A/V delay adjustments to compensate for latency.
I can only highly recomment this realtime encoder.
The creative EAX multi channel sound card will internally upmix any source to 6 channel even line input vinyl players etc.
This encoder so far is highly reliable and trouble free even under high CPU playback situations such as digital TV and realtime resampling to 48KHz (required with pre-extigy sound cards for quality playback of 44.1KHz music).
It defaults to Realtime priority and sucks approx 25% CPU, so I imagine on a modern computer would only be like 5% or less...
Try it, we have waited so long for this!