Potentially Noobish Question.... Please Enlighten Me!!!

Alty

Alty

Alty

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Joined
23 Oct 2004
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Using soundcards with digital out and connecting them to speaker setups such as the logitech z-5500 (purely as an example) - is the processing done by the amp associated with the speakers (located in the sub) instead of the processor on the sound card?

The reason for asking is that I have just purchased an X-Fi Fatal1ty and have a rather nice PURE Digital Digitheatre 5.1 speaker set that I want to use. However, if the signal is going to go straight to the speakers and be processed by the PURE Digital amp then was the X-Fi essentially a wasted purchase?

With outputting a pure digital signal - what part of the sound system actually does the processing?
 
Firstly it's worth pointing out the X-Fi doesn't do DD encoding (called DD Live), so it'll only give you surround sound through digital if the source is already DD encoded, like a DVD. It won't give you surround sound in games.

Assuming you are watching a movie though, then yes, the decoder used is located in the sub. X-Fi can do DD decoding but that would only be useful if you were using analogue output. With digital out I think the X-Fi would decode the signal and then output it in stereo. So you definitely want to use the decoder in the speakers, or switch to analogue.
 
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