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The only way to get 5.1 audio ?

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hi guys

for what i have read.

i have mobo with optical output, the mobo saids realtek 7.1 + 2 channel high definition audio codec...

my reciever decodes dolby digital an dts( i already tested via windows audio test, the 5 speakers and the bass could be heard)

so i conect the optical output to my reciever but it is just stereo sound and the reciever trys to(kind of) emulate, am i right?

so the only way to get true 5.1 dolby or dts, will be buying an external audio card x-fi with dolbdy digital live and dts conect pack?

or there is other way to do it?...

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my reciever is a little alod, is a creative inspire 5.1 digital 5700, almost 10 years old and it works when the source is 5.1... has coaxial in, optical in, fourpoint din 5.1 and analog(rear and front)... i conect my pc through optical cable....

ok i did that. the game sounds good....(optical)

then i conected the system with the analog ouputs to the analog inputs of the reciever and it sounds a little better... but it is just 4 channels...

is there anyway to force or my computer to encode the audio to 5.1 dolby digital and send it throught the optical toslink?

^^ Nope. Onboard chips do not have Dolby/DTS encoders built in for the most part [a handful do, but not many]. That limits you to 2.0 over optical/coaxial for games that do not have a built-in Dolby track [and VERY few PC games do...].

Buton, as other stated, the only way to get 5.1 is analog or get a soundcard. If you go the sound card route, you can get something for around $100 that will encode game audio into Dolby digital and let you output out of the optical cable. As long as your windows sound control panel is set to 5.1 audio you will render all games audio in 5.1. But, music and other sources will still be 2 channel unless you use software to virtualize the other channels. Also, playback from movies, dvd and bluray that have multichannel encoded audio will play back in 5.1 too.

The feature on the soundcard you are looking for is called Dolby digital Live. I cant remember what they call the live DTS encoding, but there is one for DTS too.

Dolby Digital Live
The on-board Dolby Digital Live real-time content encoder generates a Dolby Digital bit stream (48kHz at 640Kbps) from any PC sound source to unleash the full surround sound potential of your home theater system. Simply connect your PC to a Dolby Digital enabled AV receiver or devices via a single cable connection and start enjoying thrilling surround sound from 3D games, DVDs, music and more.

You can use the Spdif (either opti or coax) to do dolby digital live, I don't know what you are talking about, and frankly I'm confused about a number of conflicting sentences in your post dadiggle. He has a receiver that decodes DD, so let's get it a 5.1 DD signal. If you use the onboard audio's coax or optical, IT ONLY WILL EVER OUTPUT IN 2 CHANNELS, ...OR... it can pass through ac-3 or DTS streams to the receiver from DVD or other movie sources, but not games. It's because, while they have SPDIF ports, they don't support DD live (the majority do not anyways).

If you use a soundcard, and this is the only reason to get one IMO, is the output doesnt start at 2 channels and get virtualized to 5.1 or 7.1, it is rendered in whatever the output is set in the windows control panel; there are settings for all manner of speaker configs there. Then the signal goes to the receiver and gets decoded by the receiver into true 5.1. Not matrix. Not virtualized. In 5.1.

If his board did DD live then you are right he wouldn't need a card, and I agree with all you have written. But the reality is that hardly any of the chipsets you mention, or any for that matter, have boards that licensed the option. Check out Realtek's page for codecs:

http://www.realtek.com.tw/products/productsView.aspx?La...

Notice that the wording on every codec that supports DDL: It is optional. You have to license it as a board maker to be able to enable it. That's why you need a sound card that does it.

yes i read that about the ddl is optional to the mobo maker....

the x-fi creative sound card series have the dolby digital live option the license is 5 dollars i think...

i guess i will go analog for now via dolby surround...

great topic guys, thanks for your help...

One last thing, another option is to use the analog outs, all three of them, connected to the receiver's analog multichannel input, if your's has it. That would sound the same as the dolby digital live output ie discreet 6 channels, but of lower quality. You originally said you wanted 5.1 DD or DTS, so you have to go digital for that. But to get 5.1 sound the mobos analog outs could work. You need 3 headphone to RCA cables for it usually.

battlefield outputs dolby depending on ur output connection. it does have the dolby digital intro in the beginning for a reason, it outputs dolby just like all xbox games do.

jsut get a soundcard and ull get a 5.1, or get an external amplifier with a HDMI 1.3 support.

realtek , itself cannot encode, but it can support encoded dolby files and BYPASS them.

the days of using dolby with SPDIF are long gone, if u want to listen to dolby the way it was intended to, either switch to DTS :) , or HDMI or analogue is the way.

Ok, now I'm definattly getting my audio faq up and running, as the soundcard section is fast going downhill.

1: Very few onboard chipsets offer DDL support, mostly due to licensing issues. They can still pass through audio already encoded in Dolby, which excludes most PC games, but can NOT encode audio streams to Dolby in realtime. Its not a hardware issue, its a licensing one. You can still pass the normal 2 channels over a SPDIF connection, but not a 5.1 signal from the motherboard for this reason.

2: Analog > Digital. Sound is a natural wave, and it does not digitize well. Hence why I typically avoid any digital transmission method. Use analog whenever possible for the best possible quality.

3: Dolby and DTS are both lossy audio formats.

gamerk316 said:
Ok, now I'm definattly getting my audio faq up and running, as the soundcard section is fast going downhill.

1: Very few onboard chipsets offer DDL support, mostly due to licensing issues. They can still pass through audio already encoded in Dolby, which excludes most PC games, but can NOT encode audio streams to Dolby in realtime. Its not a hardware issue, its a licensing one. You can still pass the normal 2 channels over a SPDIF connection, but not a 5.1 signal from the motherboard for this reason.

2: Analog > Digital. Sound is a natural wave, and it does not digitize well. Hence why I typically avoid any digital transmission method. Use analog whenever possible for the best possible quality.

3: Dolby and DTS are both lossy audio formats.


for 3. correction - except for DOLBY TRUEHD, and MASTER from DTS.

btw i hope u are talking to teh rest and not me.





this is the back of my reciever, it just have two analog inputs front and rear, so it will be 4.1 i think. so there is no way i will get 5.1 analog right. my reciver will try to kind of simulate surrond...

Looks to me, you have 5.1 outputs, but not inputs; looks like if you want 5.1, you'll have to go the SPDIF route, which means you'll need something with Dolby Digital Live/DTS-Connect encoding support. As such, its looking like if you want 5.1 with that reciever, you'll probably need a soundcard.

gamerk316 said:
Looks to me, you have 5.1 outputs, but not inputs; looks like if you want 5.1, you'll have to go the SPDIF route, which means you'll need something with Dolby Digital Live/DTS-Connect encoding support. As such, its looking like if you want 5.1 with that reciever, you'll probably need a soundcard.



exactly i think there is no other way or buying a new reciever with 7.1 or 5.1 inputs... but i think the lest expensive will be a 100 dollar audio card...

the turtle beach montego DDL or the HT striker are both cheaper than $100. Skip the creative cards, their drivers are booty (look it up, I swear people say it causes computer AIDS).

They do; the DG has an optical output [which can be converted to coax easily enough]. The DS, and DX share the port with the Mic in, but the cards come with the necessary converter piece.

Quote:
First. If your going to connect your receiver via a digital solution to the soundcard your going to waste the money you spent on it.

Your computer is digital. Speakers are analog. What soundcards and receivers do they convert it to analog for your speakers because its coming in digital from your pc. The moment you connect it via a digital connection to your soundcard your telling it not to use its DAC the device (receiver) on the other end is going to do it. Anything that's done before that is being done via software which is in digital then passed thru to your receiver.
The thing going around the soundcard do the conversion then convert it again is nonsense coz they're all on the idea that the sound is in analog form on the pc.

I gave you a link how to get it to 5.1 and even 7.1. In it they showed you how to setup via the custom matrix in klite Codec pack as well. What's going to happen now your going to buy a soundcard and going to sit with the same problem. Just a extra added device in the chain. Unless your going to connect it via a analog connection to your soundcard all that features its Codec/DAC supports going to be useless as again its connected via a digital connection to your receiver.
With a digital connection the quality depends on the device on the other end. That's your receiver. 10usd soundcard or a 100000usd sound card won't make a difference. It just passes the audio thru that's it.

Ill advice you to read this before spending your money

http://www.hardwaresecrets.com/article/259

And here

http://www.hardwaresecrets.com/article/How-On-Board-Aud...


... yes but we are pretty sure hes going to do it with an analogue connection....

anyways same goes for an SPDIF if u are going to pass through 5.1 compressed signals... a 1000USD to a 100000USD receiver -not too much difference.

Onboard audtio is the pits, the only way you can get 7.1 from onboard audio is by connecting up four or five 3.5mm stereo cords to the back of your PC. A total mess.

Apart the somewhat dubious and subjective "better quality" of digital connections, the whole point of digital is to reduce the number of wires needed to carry surround to your speakers or amp to 1.

However, as previously stated there is no motherboard that has an onboard sound solution that will actually output 5.1 or 7.1 via the digital connections, all of them output 2.0 stereo only over the digital outputs.

It is "possible" to encode a 5.1 signal into the 2.0 output, but that's a real messy and lossy way of doing it.

Frankly the digital connection should not be there.

If you want 5.1 or 7.1 then either connect up 4 or 5 wires to the back of your PC, or get a decent soundcard like an X-Fi that encodes 5.1 or 7.1 properly into the digital stream.

If you want surround sound in games like Battlefield, you'll be way better off with an X-Fi anyway as it has some real nice gaming processing on the card that make the positional audio more realistic.

Quote:
Frankly the digital connection should not be there.


Its there stritcly for passthrough of audio already encoded in Dolby/DTS. And too be fair, the hardware is there for support of Dolby Digital Live...

Quote:
If you want surround sound in games like Battlefield, you'll be way better off with an X-Fi anyway as it has some real nice gaming processing on the card that make the positional audio more realistic.


Stop it, please. Creatives cards have been junk for years, and most every card has surround processing support [never mind that its the audio API thats mostly responsable for mixing these days...].

Quote:
10usd soundcard or a 100000usd sound card won't make a difference. It just passes the audio thru that's it.


Incorrect. Even when using a digital connection, the soundcard still does audio processing. While I prefer analog, digital makes sense in this case.


And yes, I forgot the DS only supported DTS encoding, and not Dolby. ASUS is putting out so many cards, its getting hard to keep track of them all...

my problem is that i dont have inputs on my reciever for analog conections, so the only chance i have is puting and audio card with dolby digital live or dts conect.. if i had a reciver with all the inputs for analog is obvious that i wont need a digital signal.
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