Sound Card Question

[davestradamus]

I want a sound card with a digital optical out. I bought a Rocketfish 5.1 card with a digital out. It didnt have Dolby Digital or DTS encoders so the best i could get was stereo. I sent it back and after searching the web (newegg, tigerdirect) I wasnt able to find a card that supported 5 or more independent channels through the optical output.

What cards you you have?

Thanks!!
-davestradamus

 

[s162216]

Let me get this straight, you want to basically send multi-channel audio via optical to a receiver?

With a DVD the optical will always send the 6 channels to the receiver and the receiver will convert/uncompress the Dolby Digital/DTS to multichannel PCM which are then converted to analogue, amplifed and sent to the respective speakers. The soundcard has absolutely no bearing on how many channels are sent.

The main problem with digital ouputs are that they only support digital PCM or dolby digital or DTS. Anything else (e.g MP3, AAC etc) is automatically converted to 2 channel PCM. There are 2 ways around this:

1. For a lot of Creative soundcards you can buy Dolby Digital Live and DTS Connect packs to allow the cards to encode everything to multichannel audio with the respective codec http://buy.soundblaster.com/_creativelabsstore/cgi-bin/pd.cgi?page=product_detail&category=Software&pid=F2222DDN6Z2H2ADDEZD
2. An older way is to have a motherboard with Nvidia Soundstorm which has Dolby Digital Live as part of the built in hardware soundcard. This optiion is great the digital audio quality is fantastic but unfortunately you can only get it on 7 year old motherboards with Nforce2 chipsets as Nvidia discontinued it due to low uptake. This is what I use as its brilliant for gaming.

Hope this helps

 

[davestradamus]

that is very helpful.

to be clear: unless i find a select few cards and/or install different software patches on other cards, i'm not going to get DTS.

i feel like i noticed a difference in sound quality with the new card, but i was hoping to get true 5.1 out of it. the DTS encoding on my DVD player far outperforms my computer....

is an upgrade really worth it if i am only getting 2 channels anyway?

sheesh!
-davestradamus

 

[s162216]

You get can get multichannel DTS by just sending it to the receiver if its a DVD your playing, if you really want to you can even tell the computer to decode it and send it via the analogue jacks. If the DVD is 5.1 then your going to get 5.1, the optical port makes no difference with the amount of channels, it just sends the 'bits'.

Are you actually sending this to an AVR/receiver and what are you talking about with your DVD player encoding DTS (do you mean decoding)? DVD players just decode the dolby digital or DTS to PCM which is then converted to analogue and outputted to the TV/ receiver which then send it to the speakers.

Once again, I will re-iterate this: unless the source is in DTS or Dolby Digital then (unless you use a card that encodes it to them), you won't get DTS or Dolby Digital to send over the optical. If the source is in stereo it remains in stereo, just because it might be DTS does not mean it will have 6 channels of audio. DTS is just the codec type and it supports up to 6 channels.

It is worth upgrading as a lot of games especially are in surround sound and can be sent over the optical if you use DTS Connect or Dolby Digital Live. Some also come pre encoded with dolby digital or dts. Also then you can watch DVDs with the full 5.1 audio if it has it. Additionally you can use Dolby Pro Logic II on a receiver to convert stereo up to 5.1.

Hope this helps

 

[davestradamus]

thank you for clearing things up for me. so, if the MEDIA is capable of various sound encoding/decoding then my reciever will produce what it is sent. the connection doesnt matter, it just delivers ones and zeros. when my reciever displays the dts or dolby digital logo, is it emulating surround by changing the output of the 2 channel signal its getting?

thanks!
-davestradamus

 

[s162216]

Thats basically it: if its not in Dolby Digital or DTS (or uncompressed PCM) its downconverted to 2 channel PCM and sent over the optical the receiver where if you have Dolby Pro Logic II or DTS NEO:6 switched on its upconverted to surround by some clever technologies. You can also do this with Dolby Digital or DTS sources that are only in stereo. O.K it slightly degrades the quality but its so slight its not even audible, I use it all the time with non surround sources.

Personally in your case I would buy a compatible Creative Soundblaster card and buy the driver pack I linked to to get Dolby Digital or DTS all the time. That way you can have discrete surround instead of just 2 channel if your source such as game is in surround so you will get it without having to use Pro Logic II or DTS NEO:6.

I hope this clears up everything

 

[davestradamus]

Thank you so much! I will look into a soundblaster card that is listed in the link above.

This board is awesome at making nooBs like me feel welcome and halfway intelligent.

Thanks!!
-davestradamus

 

[s162216]

Thats alright, I hope you have lots of fun with your new soundcard when you get it! It can be a bit confusing when you start getting receivers, soundcards etc for the first time. It took me a while initially to work out stuff that in the end was actually simpler than I thought it was.