Struggling to get 5.1 working

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The SB Z has more features for the price... (same price as the Xonar DX) but you mention driver instability?
 
Yes, I know what you mean. Years ago when Vista came out, Creative were useless. Shockingly bad drivers. Asus came along and make them look rather incompetent really, given Creative had been making audio products for many years. Asus have had their moments though, with **** drivers; although not quite on the same level of fail that Creative managed to achieve.

One reason I like the idea of the Sennheiser GSX10000; no additional drivers needed. Shame it's a pricey bit of kit for what it does. If it had optical out for connecting a DAC and maybe a better headphone amp, it would be a more attractive product at that price; although if it did have those additional things, Sennheiser would charge even more. :/
 
I think going back to the AWE, they dropped features from their drivers, didn't fix stabiliy problems., a bloke wrote drivers that improved upon creatives and unlocking the previous removed features, and creative shut him down.
 
Yeah, Daniel K, wrote drivers to fix problems people were having with Creative's own and they threatened him, rather than maybe employing him sort out their ****.
 
All you need the card to do, is to provide either Dolby Digital Live or DTS Connect. As long as the card works and the drivers work, then nothing else matters really. The DX being a better card than the DSX is irrelevant really, because you're using digital connection. DDL or DTSC aside, then the difference between the two only becomes relevant when using headphones or connecting speakers via analogue.

DSX is a good choice if you'd prefer DTS, it's just that just shy of £60 is a inflated price for a sound card that should be around £40. For £60, it's not worth considering the DSX over either DX or SB Z; for around £40 though, it's a viable option.

I suppose it comes down to whether you will want to use headphones at any point with the sound card.
 
hornetstinger said:
I've given up with Creative soundcards, bad drivers causing system instability.
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You still living in the past? Been using Creative SoundBlaster Z for over year and an half without a single Issue!!
They even released Windows 8 and 10 drivers before Asus did, Asus had there drivers in Beta stage for months.

Am sure Creative might have been bad years ago but they far from that now.
@OP SBz is an excellent sound card for both Headphone and Home cinema use.
 
Thanks for all responses

Think I'll give the SBz a shot for the price (will be mainly home cinema use, not headphones)! Can always send it back if I have issues
 
shankly1985 said:
You still living in the past? Been using Creative SoundBlaster Z for over year and an half without a single Issue!!
They even released Windows 8 and 10 drivers before Asus did, Asus had there drivers in Beta stage for months.

Am sure Creative might have been bad years ago but they far from that now.
@OP SBz is an excellent sound card for both Headphone and Home cinema use.
Click to expand...

Well I don't want to support a company that did such a thing.
 
Haven't really bought an expansion card for ages to be honest... Anyone double check please that the SBz will be compatible with my mobo in my sig? All I have in there from memory is my GFX card and possibly a cheapo 2 port USB hub. The latter can be ditched if need be
 
Yeah, all you need is a PCIe slot. There's 1x PCIe slot above the first 16x slot where the GPU will be. One below will be covered by the GPU. Other than that, there's the second black 16x slot. Other 3 light blue ones are PCI, which is a different socket type to PCIe.
 
Marsman said:
Yeah, all you need is a PCIe slot. There's 1x PCIe slot above the first 16x slot where the GPU will be. One below will be covered by the GPU. Other than that, there's the second black 16x slot. Other 3 light blue ones are PCI, which is a different socket type to PCIe.
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Perfect thanks Marsman!

OcUK seem to have a decent price on the card too so think I'll go for it :)

hornetstinger said:
For DTS/DD movies you should get DTS/DD lighting up on your Sony, just make sure you use MPC-HC and enable DD/DTS in pass through.

...

I would recommend MPC-HC over VLC.
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So just before buying anything I went to test and see if I actually know for sure that the lack of a soundcard is the issue and got a bit confused if I'm honest.

Installed MPC-HC (default settings) and grabbed a DVD with '5.1' on the back cover.

All I get on the Sony is the usual symbol which is a dolby logo with 'PL' next to it. But I get that all the time, even when playing anything from the PC, but obviously as mentioned the tests I've ran etc are clearly not 5.1.

Anyone able to offer any advice / explanation please as to what I'm misunderstanding here please? haha

I assumed the DVD would provide the DTS/DD encoding that I normally don't get, and expected to see a different logo on the sound system, but I didn't

Thanks for all the help in advance! :)
 
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hornetstinger said:
You need to do this, enable those (bitstreaming) DD & DTS

https://s17.postimg.org/k5vounlvz/mpc.png
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Thanks, where did you go to get to that sub-window from 'Options'? Just can't seem to spot it thanks!

5NYpM3I.jpg
 
hornetstinger said:
internal filters, then select audio decoder on bottom right
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Thank you

The logo I see has now changed to a Dolby logo with a 'D' next to it, instead of the PL

Two questions:

1 - With the SBz, should I then expect to see that logo all the time, regardless of what software/source I'm playing from my computer?
2 - It seems to have taken the volume control away from the PC and given it to the sound system, doesn't matter if the PC is set to volume 3 or volume 50, sounds the same. But if I set it to 0 is does go mute. And also the volume control in MPC-HC does nothing. Strange behaviour or expected?

EDIT: Also an interesting development I just noticed... Playing the sound test I downloaded through MPC-HC DOES WORK CORRECTLY... I maybe misunderstood, but I thought that would never work without the soundcard / hacked mobo drivers??
 
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1. Yes, if Dolby Digital Live is enabled. You should see DTS if using DTS Connect instead, unless the D represents digital rather than Dolby Digital. Whichever one is enabled will encode whatever audio is being received by the sound card, so that the receiver can decode the stream as either Dolby Digital or DTS.

2. That's expected. When playing a DVD and enabling bitstream, allowing the software pass the DD or DTS track found on the DVD to the receiver to decode, this disables Windows volume control because essentially, the receiver is given direct access to the audio data on the disc. Windows is not processing the audio, so has no control over it.

Been a while since I used real time encoding; Dolby Digital in particular, so I can't remember if Windows volume control is enabled, or whether the result is the same as above and the receiver only has control over the volume. I'm thinking that the same applies, but I can't be sure of that.

The sound test file works, because it's likely that is an already encoded file, likely AC3. Not much different than the receiver decoding the digital tracks found on a DVD.

The majority of other PC audio has not been already encoded with Dolby or DTS. Dolby Digital Live or DTS Connect do that in real time. The cracked Realtek drivers are intended to enable DDL and DTSC, but being cracked, Windows and driver updates can screw around with that.
 
Thanks for clearing that up, that's great! Sorry to be a pain with constant questions, but obviously don't want to spend ~£50 if it is actually just some software config or something that's missing. But your explanation regarding the sound test being already encoded clears up my confusion as to why that worked.

Sounds like the SBz will do exactly what I need then and sort out the encoding for all my PC audio on the fly

Thanks a lot!
 
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