SPDIF and my AV set up
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Soldato
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Decent surround? You can't get surround from a stereo 3.5 jack.
It'd be surround, quality would be determined by the receiver and the attached speakers.
SP/Dif is also slightly safer for your amp and speakers, a lot of cheap sound cards (especially motherboard based ones) have a nasty habit of sending some nasty pops through the analog outputs when powering on, and off the computer. SP/DIF is digital and therefor has no thumps during power up.
what i meant was at the moment the 3.5mm jack is incapable of carrying a surround sound signal so is constrained to a 2.0 setu-up, using spdif to carry the signal instead would give him the ability to have a 5.1 set-up capable of delivering dts, dd, dolby true true hd etc. he asked if it was worth using spdif so i clearly stated what he could gain by using it, at the moment he doesnt even have the option for surround.
Technically you can get surround from movies and some games with a stereo 3.5jack, Its called Dolby Surround, or Dolby Prologic, and most movies still carry the dolby surround encoding within the mix, so that old school 5.1 recievers can still work.
Infact ProLogic 2 isnt half bad at what it does. Sure digital is better, but surround is surround
fair play you can but its not on a par with dts and you really can notice the differance on movies encoded for dts if they are played otherwise, if you have the option to move to spdif the benefits it will bring outweigh any reason to stick with 3.5mm, you can only gain and loose nothing.
Technically you can get surround from movies and some games with a stereo 3.5jack, Its called Dolby Surround, or Dolby Prologic, and most movies still carry the dolby surround encoding within the mix, so that old school 5.1 recievers can still work.
Infact ProLogic 2 isnt half bad at what it does. Sure digital is better, but surround is surround
Prologic II is done by the receiver really, the feed going in to it is still stereo, still, good point though, prologic is most definitely better than bog standard stereo.
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I get what you mean.
I thought you was saying that an SPDIF cable would carry "decent quality" surround sound, I was getting ready for a digital cable rant.
Soldato
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Prologic II is done by the receiver really, the feed going in to it is still stereo, still, good point though, prologic is most definitely better than bog standard stereo.
Yep, tested it out with the Wii and Zelda a while back. Made me regret I hadn't done it sooner as it definately made the soundscape more immersive, even if the rear channel wasn't as detailed/clean as a dedicated surround kit.
Shame I'd already finished the game really, as it wasn't a bad sounding game as it stood.
I first experienced pro-logic II with Windwaker on Game Cube.
The ocean swooshing sound on the rear speakers was great.
Soldato
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Gotta be one of the things to like about Nintendo, despite any flaws, Nintendo 1st party titles are nearly always spot on technically with what the system can do at the time. Never tried the Gamecube with prologic, might just have to go check out Metroid Prime, Eternal Darkness and WW with it just to experience the games again, as I seem to remember they all had it.
I'd imagine when they transition Zelda to HD, with full surround sound etc, it'll be VERY well done, and nice to look at.
I'd imagine when they transition Zelda to HD, with full surround sound etc, it'll be VERY well done, and nice to look at.
Definitely! I only had a Gamecube (and now a Wii) for Nintendo's first party games, they're simply top class. I've got to play through the Wii remakes of Metroid Prime 1-2 and 3.
Prologic II is done by the receiver really, the feed going in to it is still stereo, still, good point though, prologic is most definitely better than bog standard stereo.
The reciever is reading phase markers and other "inaudible" information keys that let it know how to position the sound though, its very clever, but its not just a stereo to surround convertor. If the stereo source doesnt contain the dolby surround matrix, then the decoder in the reciever/processor wont be able to figure it out properly. Tis very clever, but seriously there are some games which have dolby surround built in, and most movies do.
If you just feed a prologic reciever with stereo music, the info from the rear channel will be far more random than a truely encoded source.
My first surround system was a curious home brew, where you connected the + outputs of your amp (l+ and r+) to a rear speaker, and it would end up with the most out of phase sounds going to the rear speaker, and anything which was equal in both channels would be cancelled out... Was surprisingly good... its what got me into real surround home movies in the first place
Dolby Surround, and Prologic only support a 7khz frquency limited rear channel, and in both cases its actually "dual mono". But feed the same Dolby Surround movie into a ProLogic 2 reciever, and you actually get full frequency, and it replaced the dual mono with 2 channels, so its a real 5.1 system. Its surprisingly close to Dolby Digital considering the extreme limitations of the phase encoded source material.