Soundcard Advice Needed Please

  • Thread starter Thread starter Guest
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5.1 for what? everythign will do 5.1 for dvd's, if your's doesnt it must be a software problem, but im sure we can sort that.

If you want 5.1 for everything, you're limited for choice. Its either the HDA x-mystique, the Turtle beach Montego II, or the Diamond Multimedia Xtreme sound which i dont think is available outside the U.S. HDA are bringing out a DTS encoding card, but god knows when that will finally hit these shores.

If you only interested in dvd's, and we cant get oyurs working, any cheap soundcard with an sp/dif output will do it:)
 
The onboard sound on that motherbaord does output 5.1 Dolby digital or DTS from dvds via S/PDIF (optical or coax) using passthrough mode whereby the sound stream is sent directly to the optical (in your case) without being processed by the soundcard.

Unfortunately I have no idea how to set that up in Theatertek because I've never used it. I'm sure someone will though, or put your faith in google.

As for 5.1 sound via optical cable for divx etc, that's a little more tricky because it requires the sound to be encoded. There are only 2 ways of doing this, as far as I know: get a sound card, such as the X-Mystique, that can encode Dolby Digital 5.1 or use the AC3 filter (http://ac3filter.sourceforge.net/) to do the job for you.

Having owned (and subsequently sold) an X-Mystique, I would say don't bother. The card is great for games, but for me it never did exactly what it was supposed to when it came to films or tv. Disasterous driver support and I'm not sure you can buy them now anyway.

As for the AC3 filter, it's a tricky little fella to get set up properly and I've never managed to get it working perfectly, although I know it can be done - you'll have to ask someone else to help you with that.

I see form your last thread that you'll be running MCE2005 (a good choice)! Get yourself the Nvidia DVD decoder, combined with MCE2005 you'll get a perfectly good picture and, with regards what you're trying to achieve, you can set it to simply output the DVD 5.1 directly via your optical cable.

You'll only ever get stereo from tv - your amp should do a good job with Dolby Pro Logic on the stereo source until the day comes when broadcasters change what they send to you.

That just leaves the problem with AC3 divx files - my advice is to just accept the stereo output (again - Dolby Pro Logic) or fiddle with the AC£ filter linked above.
 
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