Cheapest DD Live soundcard?

Ste

Ste

Ste

Soldato
Joined
18 Oct 2002
Posts
2,814
Hi,

I want to play games in surround sound via my reciever, but it does not have 5.1 analogue inputs and my m-audio soundcard doesn't have DDlive onboard.

What is the cheapest way to achieve this? I want to connect via co-ax cable to my reciever and have 5.1 sound in games (specifically GTA IV).

Thanks for any help
 
Ive seen a Terratec Aureon 7.1 for £31.34 although would prefer something a little better.

Anyone recommend one for the £50 mark?
 
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Yeah, I wouldn't mind paying that kind of money, just don't want to get into the £100+ range.

I've heard about DTS lossless encoding cards which will also do a similar job (i.e. let you have 5.1 surround in games via SPDIF out) - can anyone recommend one of those?

Additional requirement... just to be awkward :) Need to work in Vista 64.

Cheers
 
hmm interesting, i also have a 5.1 reciever that has optical and coaxial inputs, and ive always wondered how I could get real 5.1 to work with everyday stuff on my PC.

Maybe this is the answer.

edit, its a bit of a con, that it only supports vista, and xp64 (that no one uses)
 
have a look for an X-Mystique. they were the first DDL cards (I bought one when they were on offer for £35 at OcUK, and still use it now), should be able to find one cheap enough I should think. infact Im sure I saw one in MM not too long ago??
 
Did you come across any decent cards that support DD live, DTS connect via coaxial?, don't really want to fork out for toslink 5m cable?
 
bought an x-fi gamer for 30quid and a toslink for 3quid in the end. will update with if it works, hoping to use DTS connect over DD live as its higher bitrate
 
Ste said:
bought an x-fi gamer for 30quid and a toslink for 3quid in the end. will update with if it works, hoping to use DTS connect over DD live as its higher bitrate
Click to expand...

Cool, do let us know how you progress with dts connect
 
Hi,

I got the kit today and it works very well. The only downside is that you have to set 'speakers' (i.e. analogue) as the default sound source and then enable the encoder over SPDIF. This means there is no direct passthrough for stereo music sources. i.e. whatever you play is re-encoded (albeit at 1.5mbps for DTS).

So the music chain now reads: FLAC/Mp3 > encoded to DTS > decoded by reciever > DAC.

Which is a bit messy. However you can get round this by changing a couple of options whenever you play a game, which is worth it for now. I'm probably going to get a compeltely seperate solution for stereo listening from the PC, so for the £35 it's cost me this has been an excellent setup.

GTA IV in 5.1 is excellent, and my framerate seems better too (previously I was using an m-audio card with no directsound hardware support, so the CPU was doing it all).

Happy :)

[edit] - Just to make it clear, DTS connect works very well :)
 
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