A game I am interested recommends a DirectX Compatible sound card with surround sound. The Creative Labs cards I looked at don't state that they are DirectX compatible, but I know that they handle EAX (1 and 2 I think). Is this the same thing?
Also, of the new Audigy 2 cards I noticed in the specs that none of them do Dolby Digital in hardware. Is it all done in software, hence slowing down the processor?
Do these Dolby Digital cards have Digital output like optical or coaxial? Better yet, do any cards have digital output to connect to my DD receiver?
Audigy2 can decode DD EX 6.1 streams in hardware. So if you've got a DVD with a pre-encoded DD stream, Audigy2 can take care of it without disturbing the CPU. But, it can't do DD encoding (i.e. converting any source to a DD stream in real time), that's only done by nForce/2 Soundstorm chips.
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