Dolby Digital Out from PC Games...

Tesla · 11 Mar 2006 at 17:19

I notice that Max Payne 2 is in Dolby Digital, as are many games now.

My PC is connected to my Amp via a digital coax cable and when playing DVD's in WinDVD they are played through my seperates in true Dolby Digital 5.1.

I can only get games, like Max Payne 2 to output a stereo signal via the computers SPDIF out.

Any ideas if it's possible?

Phil99 · 11 Mar 2006 at 17:26

You need either:

nForce 2 Ultra motherboard with SoundStorm
HDA X-Mystique PCI Card
HDA X-Plosion PCI Card
Turtle Beach Montego DDL PCI Card

A "normal" soundcard can't encode to Dolby Digital on the fly without using up some extreme CPU time.

cokecan · 11 Mar 2006 at 18:45

i think some games are actually in dolby digital, or at least pro-logic. star wars battlefront 2 reckons it is (accordin to the cover and the box) but i dunno cos i got a mystique, so its all in DD anyways??

Tesla · 12 Mar 2006 at 10:19

Phil99 said:
You need either:
A "normal" soundcard can't encode to Dolby Digital on the fly without using up some extreme CPU time.

I have an NF4 mobo which uses some sort of Realtek device.

Is DD Encoded? I thought it comes straight from the game and the Amp does the decoding part. That's how DVD work anyway, do games differ?

Minstadave · 12 Mar 2006 at 11:57

Tesla said:
I have an NF4 mobo which uses some sort of Realtek device.

Is DD Encoded? I thought it comes straight from the game and the Amp does the decoding part. That's how DVD work anyway, do games differ?

No thats not outputting DD.

PinkPig · 12 Mar 2006 at 12:41

A DVD contains an encoded Dolby Digital stream - which is a nice compact way of holding multi-channel sound - and can be decoded by your decoder. The optical or digital coaxial output from a soundcard just directly outputs the stream from the DVD.

With games, however, because the sound depends on what you're doing, there can't be a DD output directly. Multi-channel sound in games is generated as several independant outputs. The best way to listen to these is with a sound system that receives each of them seperately, but some sound cards (those mentioned above, the vast majority don't do it) can encode to a DD stream which can then be decoded by your sound equipment.