Good bye AMD hello Intel?

[woel]

Hi!

So if I have understood things correctly:
Nforce 4 does not include a sound chip with dolby digital encoder. There are no sound cards with dolby digital encoder. Intels new chipsets has dolby digital encoder. My receiver has only digital input. I will buy a motherboard/sound card that has a dolby digital encoder to get 5.1 sound in games.

What do you think?

/Leo

[Fluff]

It is a shame. I'm sure nvidia will address this with an add in board.

I want a sound card with DTS encoding...

[Rob(QG)]

oops - teach me to read threads properly.

[TransformX]

Originally posted by Fluff
I want a sound card with DTS encoding...

Take a number and stand in line !

[KvHagedorn]

I think if you want 5.1 sound, you should get a better soundcard anyhow.

[Jammrock]

Originally posted by KvHagedorn
I think if you want 5.1 sound, you should get a better soundcard anyhow.

You read my mind and beat me to the punch

I agree whole heartedly on this one. dZeus and I were discussing this same issue today, and he found that nVidia used AC97 minus DD decoding because DD royalties were too high. Whether true or not, can't say.

Either way, I'd rather use a sound card of my choosing, instead of one the mobo manufacture decided to slap on the mobo. Those type of sound chips usually end up as the cheapest RealTek garbage they can get their hands on.

I'd take an Audigy 2 ZS, M-Audio Revolution, or Terrac sound card over that filth any day.

But that's just my opinion.

Jammrock

[SpiralDragon]

akkk... reminds me... still need to get my 46' RP 10yo TV fixed.... beats buying a new one.... for now....

[spadnos]

Re: Good bye AMD hello Intel?

Originally posted by woel
Hi!

So if I have understood things correctly:
Nforce 4 does not include a sound chip with dolby digital encoder. There are no sound cards with dolby digital encoder. Intels new chipsets has dolby digital encoder. My receiver has only digital input. I will buy a motherboard/sound card that has a dolby digital encoder to get 5.1 sound in games.

What do you think?

/Leo

Ummm - you shouldn't need an encoder. In fact, you don't even want a DEcoder on the motherboard, either (at least, not for this setup).

I'm assuming that you want to play DVDs, and get surround sound from your external amp, via a digital connection. To do this, you need to turn OFF any AC3 decoding that your sound card would normally do, and enable digital output (possibly digital only, if there's an option for both digital and analog at the same time). This will prevent the PC audio card (or chipset) from decoding on its own, and should pass the unaltered digital stream to the receiver.

If you're trying to do something like make an mp3 play in all speakers, then you may need an encoder onboard (but you still would need some way of positioning the 2 input channels among the 5 or 7 (.1) output channels).

- Steve

[Adis]

I said "Good bye AMD hello Intel" long time ago

[Wombat]

Re: Re: Good bye AMD hello Intel?

Originally posted by spadnos
Ummm - you shouldn't need an encoder. In fact, you don't even want a DEcoder on the motherboard, either (at least, not for this setup).

I'm assuming that you want to play DVDs, and get surround sound from your external amp, via a digital connection. To do this, you need to turn OFF any AC3 decoding that your sound card would normally do, and enable digital output (possibly digital only, if there's an option for both digital and analog at the same time). This will prevent the PC audio card (or chipset) from decoding on its own, and should pass the unaltered digital stream to the receiver.

If you're trying to do something like make an mp3 play in all speakers, then you may need an encoder onboard (but you still would need some way of positioning the 2 input channels among the 5 or 7 (.1) output channels).

- Steve

Actually, I think he's looking at a setup like playing Doom3, which can output to 5+ channels. You then <I>would</I> need an encoder to get the sound into a SPDIF connection and to his amp.

[spadnos]

Re: Re: Re: Good bye AMD hello Intel?

Originally posted by Wombat
Actually, I think he's looking at a setup like playing Doom3, which can output to 5+ channels. You then <I>would</I> need an encoder to get the sound into a SPDIF connection and to his amp.

Well - in that case, I'm all wrong

- Steve

[dZeus]

then there's always AC3Filter, which can encode to DD in software

[woel]

What good is a great sound card if you can't get more than stereo from the digital connection. Ok I know that some creative cards can output two digital pcm signals so you get four channels but then you need a creative decoder. My receiver only have stereo analog input and digital input. It is not a crappy receiver it's a harman/kardon In movies I get great surround sound on my old sounblaster since it's only passing the dd, dts, whatever over ac3. In games there are no dd or dts and therefore I need an encoder or I have to settle for stereo. For movies a audigy2 is pretty useless for me since it would not do anything more than my current card do.

That's that and that's why I'll be going for a motherboard with intel chipset in the near future.

[woel]

Originally posted by dZeus
then there's always AC3Filter, which can encode to DD in software

Encode in software in realtime without all my cpu time going to waste in games?

[dZeus]

yeah, it doesn't use many cpu cycles at all