External DD encoder?

Reality Bites · 29 Sep 2006 at 09:24

I'm looking to move to a shuttle. Fedup of a bulky case but the downside is that the soundcard i've got won't fit in one and the sound is meant to be pretty carp.

I love the DD encoding of my mystique and wondered if there is any external boxes out there which would do the job?

El_Watcher · 29 Sep 2006 at 12:31

Unless there is a USB/firewire version of the DDlive cards, I don't think it will be possible, because the game/software will have to talk to the encoder, which you can't do over speaker cable. I can't say I've seen one, but someone may know better.

squiffy · 29 Sep 2006 at 13:05

There's the official Dolby encoders but they run into thousands of pounds. Dolby Digital Decoders/processors are common and pretty cheap from £100 and up. Checkout the Denon AVD-2000

Why exactly do you need a DD encoder?

manic_man · 29 Sep 2006 at 14:23

you have hit upon the reason i cannot go back to a shuttle

If only they would include the DDLive portion of the Intel HD Audio codec (its an optional extra for motherboard makers...) then id be back in a shuttle sucking up conroe goodness like a flash...

Its my one deciding factor now.. i cant live without DD Live!

tom_nieto · 29 Sep 2006 at 16:40

What about an AV amp?

manic_man · 29 Sep 2006 at 16:52

an av amp that does dolby digital live ENCODING? I thought that external dedicated encoders were horribly expensive?

Phil99 · 29 Sep 2006 at 17:28

manic_man said:
Its my one deciding factor now.. i cant live without DD Live!

Do your speakers not have multi-channel analogue inputs?

tom_nieto · 29 Sep 2006 at 17:48

Sorry, for some reason I read decoder. Oh well.

manic_man · 29 Sep 2006 at 18:06

Phil99 said:
Do your speakers not have multi-channel analogue inputs?

They do yes (Logitech Z-5400) but i dunno i just prefer being able to use optical, maybe illogical but.. meh there ya go

Phil99 · 29 Sep 2006 at 18:26

I very much doubt it'll sound any different using analogue than digital...plus with pretty much any encoding/decoding process you're going to add latency and compression, so the analogue is likely to be better anyway (depending on the quality of the soundcard DAC vs decoder DAC that is).

Reality Bites · 1 Oct 2006 at 14:10

Phil99 said:
I very much doubt it'll sound any different using analogue than digital...plus with pretty much any encoding/decoding process you're going to add latency and compression, so the analogue is likely to be better anyway (depending on the quality of the soundcard DAC vs decoder DAC that is).

my current card makes a very good job of encoding game data. Spreads the sound around nicely.

I've got a DD decoder and 5.1 speaker setup and connect my sound card over a optical link.

It wouldn't be so bad if you could upgrade the sound module in the shuttles to include the DDlive encoding.

Phil99 · 1 Oct 2006 at 19:40

Analogue wouldn't stop the sound being 'spread around'...afterall it's only encoding the channels that would be sent to the analogue ports to a digital stream anyway.

Reality Bites · 2 Oct 2006 at 09:16

Phil99 said:
Analogue wouldn't stop the sound being 'spread around'...afterall it's only encoding the channels that would be sent to the analogue ports to a digital stream anyway.

it would be in AC3 i think.....so rear channels would give the same sound.

With DD the rear channels would give a seperate distinct sound.

Anyway, from the replies i don't think there is going to be a way until Intel ship the suttle MB's with the DDLive module enables on the sound chips

Phil99 · 2 Oct 2006 at 11:17

Reality Bites said:
it would be in AC3 i think.....so rear channels would give the same sound.

With DD the rear channels would give a seperate distinct sound.

Anyway, from the replies i don't think there is going to be a way until Intel ship the suttle MB's with the DDLive module enables on the sound chips

I think you're getting slightly muddled in this:

AC3 = Dolby Digital ; Dolby Digital Live is a realtime encoding process which takes each channel and encodes it in to a single bitstream.

So:

DDL

Code:

FL            -->                                              --> FL
FR            -->                                              --> FR
Centre       -->   }--> Dolby Digial Stream (AC3) -->{        --> Centre
LFE           -->                                              --> LFE
RL             -->                                             --> RL
RR             -->                                            --> RR

Analogue

Code:

FL            -->   FL            
FR            -->   FR
Centre       -->  Centre
LFE           -->  LFE
RL             -->  RL
RR             -->  RR

Both methods involve the same number of channels and the same channel being sent to the same speaker, just that the DDL one goes through an extra encoding/decoding process.