Re: In search of sound card with 5.1 Optical SPDIF output for DVD movies

On Sat, 10 Mar 2007 01:39:51 +0100, Ben <bencompanjen@xxxxxxxxx>
wrote:

Hi jg,

even though the product page says: "Optical S/PDIF output for playback
of pure digital audio at resolutions of up to 24 Bits at 48KHz sampling
rate, allowing for passthrough of Dolby® Digital and DTS® multichannel
DVD sound to external A/V receivers.", the Riviera manual says the SPDIF
output can only be used in 2-channel mode. The SPDIF protocol itself is
only 2-channel, but by using the AC3 codec this can be converted to 5 or
maybe even more channels. I think the Riviera doesn't support the AC3 codec.

The Montego DDL ($60) can output multi-channel audio through the
SPDIF-output, in the Dolby Digital Live encoding, so it depends on your
receiver: if it can decode this DDL encoded sound (I never heard of it
before and I doubt it is widely implemented, but I'm not too
knowledgeable about these things), you're good.

By the way, if you have a stereo system, will it decode multi-channel
SPDIF anyway? The Riviera will do if you only have a stereo receiver to
produce the sound, but with regards to future receiver upgrades, you
might want to look into sound cards capable of outputting multi-channel
sound over SPDIF.

Good luck!

Ben

jg wrote:
I have a PC hoooked up to a nice LCD 37" monitor that I use to watch
movies using PowerDVD. For sound I use the TV's built in speakers and
use the headphone output from the PC. Sound is horrible. My current
stereo system will accept both coax and optical SPDIF. (I don't want
to user coax though.)

So what I am looking for is a sound card that will output digital 5.1
sound for my receiver to decode. I am hoping to keep the price below
$50 if at all possible. I was about to purchase Turtle Beach Riviera
as it has optical SPDIF out and is fairly inexpensive but I read some
reviews that state that it will only output stereo sound via optical
SPDIF (this makes no sense to me because the way I see it, it should
be pretty easy to lift the digital audio from DVD and send out the
SPDIF output w/o any processing.)

I read some good reviews regarding the Terratec SoundSystem SiXPack
5.1. However, I have not found this card for sale anywhere.

Anybody know of any sound cards with optical SPDIF output that will
not break the bank and will work with PowerDVD. (I am also open to
the idea of switching to Win DVD if that is what it takes.)

jg


Hi jg:

I'm using the TB Montego 5.1 DDL in XP Pro, MCE2005 and Vista.
I send the audio via its optical S/PDIF OUT to my HT system which is
based on a Denon 3802 receiver.
It works very well.
Whether the signal sent is pre-Dolby encoded (movies etc) or DDL
encoded (games or anything you want) on the card, my receiver's Dolby
decoder has no problem detecting it and decoding it to 5.1 or whatever
it was encoded to.
I'm a bit of a purist in that I prefer to listen to music as the
producer and musicians intended; ie usually 2-channel stereo (audio
CDs) and the card does a very good job of it.
If you want to experiment with 5.1 for that or any stereo sound
source, the card does that well with DDL encoding on the fly.
When I've used 5.1 DDL encoding for games, I don't notice any lag and
in general no artifacts.
With MCE2005 when using DDL on TV program playback (Tuner card:
Hauppauge WinTV-PVR-USB2 MCE kit NTSC), again no lag nor audio
artifacts.

Drivers/software I downloaded/installed from C-Media who are mfrs of
the chip on the card.

YMMV. I use these cards on systems with CPU: Athlon 64 X2 4800+ Dual
Core S939 Toledo; Motherboard: Asus A8N32-SLI Deluxe nForce4 SLI X16;
RAM: 2GB (Corsair XMS-3500LL PRO 2GB kit) PC3500 CL2/1T; Video Card:
ATI Radeon X1800XT 512MB PCI-E; HDD: 2 x 500GB Seagate Barracuda
7200.9 500GB SATA 3Gb/s 7200RPM 16MB.
My HT system is good enough that I would any audio warts from this
card. I don't.

Happy trailz,


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